Difference between revisions of "New alphax variables in Yitzi's patch"
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One of the primary features added in Yitzi's patch is a collection of new features that can be modified through the alphax.txt file. The new options are as follows: | One of the primary features added in Yitzi's patch is a collection of new features that can be modified through the alphax.txt file. The new options are as follows: | ||
| − | # Beginning in | + | # Beginning in version 2.0, many existing variables have a greatly increased range of acceptable values. |
| − | # Beginning in patch 1.1, the ecodamage formula is substantially more customizable. In particular, the following modding options exist as of version 2. | + | # There is a "Drone rules flags" setting (first working in version 2.1), allowing the rules controlling drones and talents to be tweaked: |
| + | :* A value of 16 means that the University's bonus drones and conquest-based drones can create "superdrones", making the University significantly harder to play on higher difficulty levels (or when using a substantial number of specialists) and increasing the value of Police State when warmongering (or digesting recent conquests) in such cases. | ||
| + | :* A value of 8 implements a number of changes meant to limit drone control to the methods designed for it (making all factions harder on higher difficulty levels, though the Peacekeepers less than most): Firstly, if drones are turned into specialists with no talents in the base, other drones will be turned into "superdrones" to compensate. If all non-specialists are "superdrones" and there are supposed to be even more drones than that, it will make "phantom drones" that will not appear but will offset new talents before superdrones do; "phantom drones" can be removed by offsetting them with talents, or via police/facilities/projects if there are no drones (regular drones or superdrones) remaining. If drones are reduced by facilities, and then added again by pacifism, each "phantom drone" will combine with a pacifism drone to make a superdrone. Thirdly, superdrones count double, and "phantom drones" once, when counting drones to determine whether there will be a golden age or drone riots. (It will thus be possible to have drone riots even in an all-specialist base.) Finally (as the flip side to "phantom drones"), it will be possible to have "phantom talents", allowing golden ages even in bases where specialists outnumber non-specialists. | ||
| + | :* A value of 4 means that the non-lethal methods special ability and punishment spheres will not work at -1 or lower POLICE rating. | ||
| + | :* A value of 2 means that drone-suppressing facilities and projects are less effective at suppressing "superdrones" than regular drones (effectively taking one point of drone control to turn the superdrone into a regular drone before using another point to remove it), and will suppress "phantom drones" first. Police are unaffected by this setting, and will control superdrones just as well as normal drones. | ||
| + | :* A value of 1 means that drone-suppressing facilities can suppress pacifism drones. | ||
| + | :* To use more than one rule, the values for the desired rules can be added to get the desired value for the setting. | ||
| + | # Beginning in patch 1.1, the ecodamage formula is substantially more customizable. In particular, the following modding options exist as of version 2.1: | ||
:*The bonus ecological damage provided by condensers, boreholes, and echelon mirrors can be set (as a multiple of the damage caused by a normal unworked terraforming improvement.) | :*The bonus ecological damage provided by condensers, boreholes, and echelon mirrors can be set (as a multiple of the damage caused by a normal unworked terraforming improvement.) | ||
:*The borehole count per base can be set to be squared when calculating ecological damage; this allows heavy borehole use to be heavily penalized (at least until the availability of hybrid forests) without making lesser amounts of boreholes too problematic. | :*The borehole count per base can be set to be squared when calculating ecological damage; this allows heavy borehole use to be heavily penalized (at least until the availability of hybrid forests) without making lesser amounts of boreholes too problematic. | ||
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# The extra speed gained by air units for each level of reactor can be modified, and can be different for needlejets (anything that has more than one turn of fuel and is not destroyed when attacking), copters (anything that has exactly one turn of fuel and is not destroyed when attacking, and therefore can attack more than once per turn), gravships (anything that requires no fuel and is not destroyed when attacking), and missiles (anything that is destroyed when attacking). | # The extra speed gained by air units for each level of reactor can be modified, and can be different for needlejets (anything that has more than one turn of fuel and is not destroyed when attacking), copters (anything that has exactly one turn of fuel and is not destroyed when attacking, and therefore can attack more than once per turn), gravships (anything that requires no fuel and is not destroyed when attacking), and missiles (anything that is destroyed when attacking). | ||
# A penalty can be added to all resources brought in by crawlers. | # A penalty can be added to all resources brought in by crawlers. | ||
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The following options are slated for future patches: | The following options are slated for future patches: | ||
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# There will be the option to have a chosen technology allow crawlers to crawl all 3 resources inside the base radius, and another allow multiresource crawling even outside the base radius. (This has already been placed in the .txt file as of patch 2.0, but does nothing yet). | # There will be the option to have a chosen technology allow crawlers to crawl all 3 resources inside the base radius, and another allow multiresource crawling even outside the base radius. (This has already been placed in the .txt file as of patch 2.0, but does nothing yet). | ||
# There will be the option to have a technology double the effectiveness of the ECM and AAA defensive abilities. | # There will be the option to have a technology double the effectiveness of the ECM and AAA defensive abilities. | ||
Revision as of 21:43, 19 June 2013
One of the primary features added in Yitzi's patch is a collection of new features that can be modified through the alphax.txt file. The new options are as follows:
- Beginning in version 2.0, many existing variables have a greatly increased range of acceptable values.
- There is a "Drone rules flags" setting (first working in version 2.1), allowing the rules controlling drones and talents to be tweaked:
- A value of 16 means that the University's bonus drones and conquest-based drones can create "superdrones", making the University significantly harder to play on higher difficulty levels (or when using a substantial number of specialists) and increasing the value of Police State when warmongering (or digesting recent conquests) in such cases.
- A value of 8 implements a number of changes meant to limit drone control to the methods designed for it (making all factions harder on higher difficulty levels, though the Peacekeepers less than most): Firstly, if drones are turned into specialists with no talents in the base, other drones will be turned into "superdrones" to compensate. If all non-specialists are "superdrones" and there are supposed to be even more drones than that, it will make "phantom drones" that will not appear but will offset new talents before superdrones do; "phantom drones" can be removed by offsetting them with talents, or via police/facilities/projects if there are no drones (regular drones or superdrones) remaining. If drones are reduced by facilities, and then added again by pacifism, each "phantom drone" will combine with a pacifism drone to make a superdrone. Thirdly, superdrones count double, and "phantom drones" once, when counting drones to determine whether there will be a golden age or drone riots. (It will thus be possible to have drone riots even in an all-specialist base.) Finally (as the flip side to "phantom drones"), it will be possible to have "phantom talents", allowing golden ages even in bases where specialists outnumber non-specialists.
- A value of 4 means that the non-lethal methods special ability and punishment spheres will not work at -1 or lower POLICE rating.
- A value of 2 means that drone-suppressing facilities and projects are less effective at suppressing "superdrones" than regular drones (effectively taking one point of drone control to turn the superdrone into a regular drone before using another point to remove it), and will suppress "phantom drones" first. Police are unaffected by this setting, and will control superdrones just as well as normal drones.
- A value of 1 means that drone-suppressing facilities can suppress pacifism drones.
- To use more than one rule, the values for the desired rules can be added to get the desired value for the setting.
- Beginning in patch 1.1, the ecodamage formula is substantially more customizable. In particular, the following modding options exist as of version 2.1:
- The bonus ecological damage provided by condensers, boreholes, and echelon mirrors can be set (as a multiple of the damage caused by a normal unworked terraforming improvement.)
- The borehole count per base can be set to be squared when calculating ecological damage; this allows heavy borehole use to be heavily penalized (at least until the availability of hybrid forests) without making lesser amounts of boreholes too problematic.
- The bonus ecological damage provided by condensers, boreholes, and echelon mirrors can be set to not be affected by PLANET rating; this can be useful if ecological damage is to be a major balancing factor for these types of terraforming without giving "green" factions an overly high ability to use them.
- The number of "clean minerals" at the beginning of the game, as well as those gained per fungal pop and per facility, can be modified. Note that as of patch version 2.0, the facility-based ones are dependent on facilities owned, not facilities built.
- The number of "virtual minerals" caused per major atrocity or tectonic missile can be modified; in addition, the game can be set to count Planet Buster use instead of major atrocities (so the umpteenth use of nerve gas will not cause extra ecological damage, but using Planet Busters with the U.N. charter repealed will.) Note that if this is set to 0, atrocities and missiles will affect neither ecological damage nor native life aggressiveness.
- Alternatively, fungal pops can be set to reduce the extra ecological damage caused by major atrocities (or Planet Busters with the appropriate mod) and Tectonic Missiles, but not create extra "clean minerals" of their own. Note that if this reduces the ecological damage down to 0, that faction will have a "clean slate" as far as Planet is concerned, and past atrocities/missiles will not increase native life aggressiveness.
- The total minerals produced can be set to be divided by a fixed amount (rounded down) before being added to terraforming-based ecological damage; this allows the relative significance of minerals and terraforming to be tweaked.
- Normally, ecological damage is proportional to (3-PLANET), with a maximum of 6 and minimum of 1. All three of these numbers can be changed.
- Normally, the last step in calculating ecological damage is dividing by 300; this divisor can be changed.
- An extra amount of ecological damage per base can be added (or subtracted) after all other calculations are complete.
- The cost of upgrading a unit can be modified. Not only can the cost per point of difference between the costs of the old and new weapon and armor values now be modified (and they need not be the same), and likewise for the upgrade cost per row of minerals cost by the new unit, but there can also be a portion of the upgrade cost proportional to the square of the cost of the new unit, and there can likewise be a discount for the cost of the old unit (either proportional to the row cost or proportional to its square, or some combination of the two.)
- The energy credits gained as Planetpearls can be increased or decreased from its current value of 10 per lifecycle.
- Consensers can be set to give a fixed amount of nutrients (or none at all) rather than the current +50%.
- The extra speed gained by air units for each level of reactor can be modified, and can be different for needlejets (anything that has more than one turn of fuel and is not destroyed when attacking), copters (anything that has exactly one turn of fuel and is not destroyed when attacking, and therefore can attack more than once per turn), gravships (anything that requires no fuel and is not destroyed when attacking), and missiles (anything that is destroyed when attacking).
- A penalty can be added to all resources brought in by crawlers.
The following options are slated for future patches:
- There will be the option to have a chosen technology allow crawlers to crawl all 3 resources inside the base radius, and another allow multiresource crawling even outside the base radius. (This has already been placed in the .txt file as of patch 2.0, but does nothing yet).
- There will be the option to have a technology double the effectiveness of the ECM and AAA defensive abilities.
- There will be the option (placed in the .txt file as of patch 2.0, but without doing anything yet) to choose one of a number of rules for calculating unit cost.
