LunarMongoose
King
Without the Nukes-bonus, nuclear plants are not very usefull in the game.
I agree, but this particular solution to the problem never occured to me. That is a seriously awesome idea dood; I love it. Unfortunately it's not just XML, heh. The problem is the Drydock, etc, are using the DomainProductionModifier. Without some SDK work, all you could do would be to make it increase production on ALL air units, which would include missiles and nukes.
I can hardcode the intended production bonus pretty easily, and make it show up in the building mouseover text and everything. The problem is the AIs. There's tons of great functionality out there in other mods - Railroad Artillery that can only move on Railroad tiles, mercenary units you hire out of a Python dialog Black Market screen, Dale's ranged bombardment, detailed tactical full-stack combat, Avain's "only get food and hammers from gathering and killing animals" in the Prehistoric era (the list is very long) - but I don't put them in THIS mod unless I'm sure I can teach the AIs to use them properly, OR they are at little or no disadvantage from NOT knowing how to use them properly.
I'll have to look at the AI code surrounding power plants closely, but I suspect it's hard for them to make a permanent choice like this (since you can't selectively demolish your own buildings later) on a long-term basis. AIs build stuff according to their current and short-to-medium-term needs, and those needs can change frequently. Aside from JDog's work in BetterAI to give them long-term direction in pursuing victory conditions - which is way too complicated for me to try to extrapolate from right now - I'd be locking them into doing things they might not really want to do.
NORMALLY, if a unit requires a building and an AI decides he really wants that unit all of a sudden, he says, "okay, I'll do that building next." Whatever building or unit the AI wants to build the most at any given time, wins; that's basically how it works. They know to build up a big army if they're planning a war, but I'm not sure they know how to decide in advance, as a general principle, how many nukes they want to use, if any. They look at current conditions, empire power levels, who's vulnerable to nukes right now, the status of the UN bill, and probably a bunch of other factors, and determine if they should build a nuke right now. That's about it. Adding strategic planning for this would be a major undertaking.
But if I tell them, "if you want more than a few nukes right now, build Nuclear Plants first"... then they may change their mind by the time the Plants are done, and then they're screwed. With any other building, it doesn't matter: all other buildings are completely positive in their effects (save a few unhealth points here and there, or temporary negatives like minus empire population), AND all other buildings are cumulative, meaning they don't lock out other building choices with their own benefits, potentially. Power plants are a special case.
The Nuclear Plant already has an advantage: at the small risk of a meltdown, it provides power without the Coal Plant's 2 unhealth penalty. Which is kinda a big deal, heh. Unless you're on a river, or finish the Three Gorges Dam, it's your only unhealth-free power solution til you get to Fusion Plants (which I added specifically to avoid the meltdown thing later). I can make the ICBM require the Nuclear Plant, but that will make it take too long to unlock, and again, it locks the AIs into an exclusive choice that they're not making intelligently. I can also lower the cost of the Nuclear Plant further to give it a little bit more of an advantage, even though that's less realistic.
It would also be slightly unfair to the Japanese civ, b/c their unique building is a non-polluting Coal Plant (with a few other bonuses too if I remember correctly). But I do wonder now if the AIs are using Fusion Plants at all with their current AI programming... Probably not, heh. I think the way it works is, you can build a clean plant to replace a (non-Japanese) Coal Plant, but after that you can't change. I dunno, maybe the permanent meltdown risk is acceptable if the AIs want to build lots of nukes at the current moment. But what if they don't, they build the Dam wonder instead as a result, and then they suddenly decide they DO want lots of nukes all of a sudden. A human player would not make that mistake nearly as easily.
I SUPPOSE I could lift the restriction on building multiple power plants in the same city though... That would certainly help. Hmm.