Franton

Join Date 08/2012

Question: Purchase cost for rush-building and upgrades

I noticed that rushing a building's or ship's construction costs about 20 times the construction cost in coins. This seems awfully expensive. The Walkthrough 2018 by Frogboy specifically states that you're supposed to use your starting money to rush-buy stuff, but that ability is greatly limited by the biblical amounts of cash you need for just one building or ship!

Next I've noticed that when upgrading ships, the cost is only around 15 times the difference in cost. Therefore we now have the odd situation that it's cheaper to just rush-build an empty hull, and then upgrade it to the actual ship you want!

There is one exception though: if you try to upgrade a ship wihtout a colony module to one that has at least one, the upgrade cost explodes! It took me some while to figure out that this may in fact be intended, because after the upgrade, that newly branded colony ship suddenly carries 1B population. IMHO it would have made a lot more sense to just upgrade to an empty colony ship instead!

The questions these things raise are:

1. Why are things so awfully expensive to buy? Economy, research and production buildings are about on par with regards to the amount of resources they produce. I could understand, say, a triple or quadruple cost for rush-building. But 20 times? Really?

2. Why is upgrading cheaper? Not that it's anywhere near cheap - we're still talking about at least13-14 times the cost difference, and often more.

3. Why does an upgrade to a colony ship need to add population? And add half a fortune in cost?? That doesn't seem to make sense.

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

1. This has never been rebalanced since tha launch of the game. And it is exactly 20x, its set in GlobalDefs.

2. Again never been rebalanced since launch. This is also set in GlobalDefs.

3. To prevent an exploit where people would build a cheap cargo hull, constructor etc, then upgrade it to a colony ship for next to nothing. You guessed it, change it in GlobalDefs.

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@1 and 2: I've played many 4X games with rush build ability, but none of them more than quadrupled the cost. 20x seems excessive in comparison when the means to get cash don't scale up accordingly, as compared to the means to get production! In other games - including GC2(!) - it wasn't exactly easy, but still possible to focus on cash-flow alone and buy stuff rather than building it. Here in GC3 this seems impossible.

@3: I don't see any exploit as the construction cost is the same for a colony ship or constructor - it's only the upgrade cost that is excessive; and only because of the forced 1B pop which doesn't make sense in the first place, except maybe for synths.

Thanks for the hint to GlobalDefs. If there's a setting for minimum colony ship pop, I might change it, but other than that I'll probably leave it at that to prevent confounding the AI.

P.S.: just found it: it's called MinShipPopulation

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

3. Well you could build a constructor or any cargo hull, empty even, fly it off exploring, fidn a planet, upgrade to a colony ship with 0 population (cause this used to happen) then colonize said planet and it would grow from 0 pop. This was SD's idea of a fix, instead of fixing the actuall broken code. (Which they might have done now)

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Ok, I get it. As pointed out in my colony ship thread this hasn't occured to me since I always use Prolific and want my colonizers full, not at 0 or even 1B pop.

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Yeah I tweaked the global defs file for exactly this reason. I thought I was being generous moving it down to 12, may reconsider and lower if further to 8. If you want to tweak it yourself make sure you do it in the most recent dlc folder.

And yeah, in a unmodded game the only real function of incomes seems to being paying for maintenance costs, the 20x rush multiplier is flat out absurd when early game your are lucky to have an income of +5 to +10, more often its negative 20.

Also the pacing settings dont affect rush costs because they act as a production bonus rather than a cost reduction.

How were rush costs originally balanced when they were properly designed.

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DivineWrath

Join Date 05/2006

+135

Strange. When I tried to upgrade a cargo hulled ship to a colony ship, it told me that I could not because I had no population on that ship. I did that not too long ago. Maybe the bug has since been fixed?

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Quoting DivineWrath,

reply 6

I thought it had, you just confirmed it

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Hello

Is there a way to make a default 1 defending legion per populated planet ? This would help prevent the ridiculous strategy of slipping by forces to steal planets cheaply...

I have not tested the GRM with the orbital mines, does the AI make use of it ?

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Quoting jabberjaws,

reply 8

Is there a way to make a default 1 defending legion per populated planet ? This would help prevent the ridiculous strategy of slipping by forces to steal planets cheaply...

Yep simply add Garrision to any improvement.

Quoting jabberjaws,

reply 8

I have not tested the GRM with the orbital mines, does the AI make use of it ?

Best ask that in the GRM thread...

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Quoting Horemvore,

reply 9

Yep simply add Garrision to any improvement.

Would this produce the legion on colonization ??

<Improvement>
    <InternalName>ColonyCapital</InternalName>
    <DisplayName>ColonyCapital_Name</DisplayName>
    <ShortDescription>ColonyCapital_ShortDec</ShortDescription>
    <Description>ColonyCapital_Dec</Description>
    <Icon>ColonyCapital.png</Icon>
    <BuildIcon>ColonyCapital_Build.png</BuildIcon>
    <ListIcon>ColonyCapital_Icon.png</ListIcon>
    <ImprovementType>Special</ImprovementType>
    <SecondaryType>MaxManufacturing</SecondaryType>
    <PlacementType>Special</PlacementType>
    <IsIndestructible>true</IsIndestructible>
    <IsColonyUnique>true</IsColonyUnique>

<Triggers>
           <OnEvent>OnConstructImprovment</OnEvent>
            <Target>
                <TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
            </Target>
            <Lifetime>Instant</Lifetime>
            <Modifier>
                <EffectType>Garrisons</EffectType>
                <Target>
                    <TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
                </Target>
                <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
                <Value>1</Value>
            </Modifier>
        </Triggers>

Is this the proper trigger event ?

And I would like to add it to the initial Capital , will the game accept this ?

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Should work, if the Colony Capital is considered to be "constructed" and not just "placed". You would have to test it and see.

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result

C:\Users\ABCDE\Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Mods\UCP_Core\Game\ImprovementDefs.xml(122,17): error:
element 'Triggers' is not allowed for content model '(InternalName,DisplayName,ShortDescription,Description?,Icon,BuildIcon?,ListIcon?,ImprovementType,ResourceStatType?,SecondaryType?,PlacementType?,SupportedPlanetTraits*,RelativeWeight?,OnePerPlanet?,IsIndestructible?,IsGalacticWonder?,IsPlayerWonder?,IsColonyUnique?,DoNotAutoUpgrade?,UnderPopulationCapOnly?,DoNotShowNotificationsWhenBuilt?,LandPercentageMin?,Stats*,Triggers*,LevelEffectStats*,LevelEffectTriggers*,NeighborBonuses*,Prerequ?,Preclusions?)'

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Quoting DivineWrath,

reply 6

Maybe the march update fixed it. I'm sure this has been in the game a week earlier. Or maybe it's only fixed in one of the expansion - I only have the base game, and I understand that some fixes do not get backported.

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Horemvore

Join Date 08/2009

+123

Quoting Franton,

reply 13

I understand that some fixes do not get backported.

Thats bad development if true.

EDIT

@Jabber - Check your code. looks like something is not lining up with the scheme or you are missing a closing tag.

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Quoting Horemvore,

reply 14

Quoting Franton,

reply 13

I understand that some fixes do not get backported.

Thats bad development if true.

Maybe I'm overinterpreting some forum posts I've seen, and this only applies to stuff that is expansion-specific rather than part of the core game. This is really hard to tell because most of the time people don't mention which version of the game they're referring to, or what expansion(s).

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all good, must be placed after STATS section like COBOL

I wholeheartedly recommend this policy. 1 garrison per colony via placement of code above in improvement defs , per civ capital (might make this 2), col cap upgrade cap, build city, build metropolis, temple of valor, planet defense dome ,this simulates what I wanted forever .. the pop defends itself, and the more it grows , the more you get. when the game begins , your cap is defended by the people, also for the central mine just cuz amphibians would require special suits to fight them, maybe they should have weak soldiers only when trying to invade others but this is impossble

sorry for the hi-jack

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