Petri Kokko

[quote]Is there a setting to stop all these designs from popping up or what is the best way to go about this?[/quote] Isn't the easiest way to simply just use the tab "user" and forget the "core" and "all" tabs?

I think multiple shipyards per planet would just add unnecessary complexity without bringing anything new or interesting. It wouldn't actually make the game any better. It'd just be an ad hoc solution to hide a visible symptom of the actual root problem. Being able to build anything in 1 turn should be an exceptional situation. If it happens routinely then that's a sure sign that the production costs are too small compared to the average production capability a player normally bui

Actually, they should have a "production overview" tab in the planetary government view that would show the actual total production calculation in a nice graphical flowchart. That way it would be intuitively clear as to what is happening and why. The chart could simply be four boxes (or whatever looks nice) arranged in a row from left to right, each box connected with an arrow to the one next to it, and a 3-way split at the right. It would represent the chain from population to the flat bonus

[quote]Anyone else feel like even on the slowest settings the game progresses too quickly?[/quote] Me, too! My solution was to mod the *TechDefs.xml files by multiplying all ResearchCost values by 4. That resulted in a suitably slow tech pace.

It works! Big thank you. Did a few quick tests with the tiny and small maps and the parameter "Base" appears indeed to be the number of objects that the game tries to put on the map, and the "Stars" parameter in MapSetupDefs.xml is then simply the percentage of stars out of this total. Put Base=32 and Stars=0.5 ("Rare") and you get 16 stars. Base=16 + Stars=0.5 yields 8 stars etc. And I thought that Base parameter was some map size value thing that shouldn't be touched... SD needs

[QUOTE]Base>1200 seems to increase the total number of objects the map allows to spawn.[/QUOTE] It means that? That's good to know! I have been tinkering with map sizes, star frequencies, and resource availablilties to get very sparse maps to get a "space is big" feeling with many hexes between stars. And all I had to do was decrease that number? :) I assume it can be decreased safely as there shouldn't be technical issues with having less stuff around?

[quote]TBH the project you are describing is MUCH larger than what you may think[/quote] Thank you for the explanation. Too bad. The idea was indeed to try to avoid messing up with the AI design choices while still automating my own. It *sounded* so simple :). Well, have to make do with the manual designs then, and plan them so that I can easily use them from one game to the other. Some naming convention, perhaps, to keep track of the upgrades. But thanks!

I'd like to add new ship blueprints, mainly to automatize upgrades of ships the way I usually would design them manually. Is there any information or examples available about this? I.e. what are the minimum things I need to add and modify to get it work? I have modified existing blueprints to see how the component stuff works but that's easier as all the cross-references and linked definitions are already there and you only need to modify the ship contents. However, I'd li

Well, here's what I was able to find out: Using the Tiny, Small, and Medium maps I generated galaxies with the value of "Stars" in MapSetupDefs.xml running from 0.1 to 1.0. Galaxy type was scattered. Number of opponents was the minimum possible (Major=1, Minor=0) and all resources were set to NONE. These latter because the map generator seems to either create or guarantee a star for each opponent and the nebulae, black holes and asteroids presumably take up space from the stars. W

Is there any info/help available on what the values in the MapSetupDefs.xml actually mean? By that I mean how they actually affect the map generating algorithm. Obviously the parameter name refers to the object it targets, and most values seem to be probabilities which is confirmed by getting less stuff towards 0 and more stuff towards 1 but nothing noticeable above 1. So, yes, I *did* experiment. :) Specifically, what I'm after is "if I set this probability value to P, I

> Therefor i propose that, the already existing standard for, xml patching is implemented in the game Your suggested solution would certainly make it quite flexible and allow new ways to combine stuff but is it perhaps too complex? If they went for it I'm all in favor of that but usually the more costly it is to do the less chance it gets picked up... At the most basic level what we are missing in modding is the ability to modify single values in existing files