Final Frontier Plus

I probably should have used Better AI, but I didn't think to... which means that I'll have to merge it in in the future. But I question how much of an effect it would have on where Final Frontier's AI comes up short- which is when dealing with solar systems and planets and all the other AI code in the python.

None of course. But it would improve all other parts of the economic and warfare AI which are still used by Final Frontier.
 
Actually, most of the building choices are done by the regular AI.

The python only knows about a small number of buildings which it uses to try and fix specific problems (not enough food = try to build a nutrition facility, not enough happy = try to build a sports arena, and so on). Example: When the military weight comes out highest (if over the threshold) the only thing it tries to force is a capital shipyard - if you don't have the tech for it yet or if the system already has one (which it will pretty quick, given that this likes to force one) there is nothing else that this option will try to make happen. It only tries to correct the problem that has the highest weight, if it can't (like if the military weight is highest and the system already has a capital shipyard) then it won't do anything in the python - it does not try the second highest weighted thing or anything like that.

It also won't try to override the DLL in various cases: when there is no problem (none of the weight calculations gives a value over the threshold), or it can't fix the problem, or it hits the random chance to just bail out before even checking (a flat 15%), or frequently when it is at war (40% chance to bail for each civ it is currently at war with).
 
I'm working through a game at the moment.
I'm hoping to post some feedback when I finish the game. It's looking great so far. :goodjob:
 
Ok I've got some comments. I haven't organised them very well and some of them are only nitpicking. Others are loose suggestions. Sorry if I repeat anything others have already said!

---------------------

At the trade screen, it says "City of Halis" etc. These are solar systems I believe.
Some form of city governor possible? 'Twould be nice to be able to emphasise food, for example.
When selecting the planet you want to build a building on, instead of clicking the checkbox every time, is it possible to ctrl+click the planet to tick the box or something like that?

When you go to globe view and select culture, starbases don't have any culture so their borders don't appear. I think this diminishes the usefulness of this view so would it be possible to make a starbase put 1 culture on its tiles when it gets built so that it at least appears under this view?

I was impressed to see the AI snatch up some good starbase spots (picking up 3 resources at a time) in the middle of the spiral galaxy. I sorta forgot and by the time I was doing it I was picking up one resource per starbase.

I find every now and then I have construction ships that aren't doing anything but putting roads on pointless tiles. My problem with this is that it clutters up the nice clean look of the star systems. If there was something else they could do in the meantime, this wouldn't be a problem. Problem is I can't think of anything at the minute that would be reasonable for them to do.

When you build buildings that you already have one or more of, it seems the displayed yield the building would give you is actually the combined yield of when you have the multiple buildings. For example, building the 3rd stellar market tells me it will give me +9 influence. This is not a big issue but it can be misleading, especially for beginning players.

Under the pedia entry for slave state, the link to Draft does not work.

For the oil resource, I thought it might make more sense to use the usual oil picture rather than the coal picture. I suppose most of the resource pictures have been chosen the way they have because their actual decals on the game board look appropriate for outer space. The oil splodge probably wouldn't like right.


In the city screen, it would be nice if the planets you could not work yet were perhaps given a coloured border to indicate that fact. Perhaps the colour could be different depending on what level you need to reach to work the planet.

There isn't any breakdown of the trade route modifiers.

I won by cultural victory 291 turns into the game barely trying. I was playing Noble so that could be part of the reason why but I never put the culture slider above 20% and to be honest I didn't even try to get that victory. This leads me to believe the cultural victory thresholds aren't very balanced yet. I even had the civ that had a cultural penalty as a trait.

Is there any way to use population points that do not fit on any of the planets because they're all full? Towards the end of the game, with the civics I was running and the way I'd developed my cities, I was deliberately trying to build unhealthy buildings (factory and manufacturing plant) to slow the growth of my cities when they were getting to the size where growth was pointless. There was basically no negative consequence of building unhealthy buildings. This doesn't feel right.
 
Thanks for the feedback!

At the trade screen, it says "City of Halis" etc. These are solar systems I believe.

This should be able to be changed, but I'm having difficulty actually locating the text key. Anyone know if this could be changed to say something like "Colony of..." instead of "City of..."?

Some form of city governor possible? 'Twould be nice to be able to emphasise food, for example.

When selecting the planet you want to build a building on, instead of clicking the checkbox every time, is it possible to ctrl+click the planet to tick the box or something like that?

When you go to globe view and select culture, starbases don't have any culture so their borders don't appear. I think this diminishes the usefulness of this view so would it be possible to make a starbase put 1 culture on its tiles when it gets built so that it at least appears under this view?

All three of these are good ideas, but I'm not quite sure how to do any of them, I'm afraid.

I find every now and then I have construction ships that aren't doing anything but putting roads on pointless tiles. My problem with this is that it clutters up the nice clean look of the star systems. If there was something else they could do in the meantime, this wouldn't be a problem. Problem is I can't think of anything at the minute that would be reasonable for them to do.

Assuming they're automated, you could un-automate them. If they're un-automated, don't do anything with them, keep them in your solar systems.

That is a good point, though- at present, construction ships are good for three things: starbases, resources, and routes. Since cities don't work plots regular improvements which increase yields are useless. But we can add other types of weird improvements, like other kinds of space stations. Or maybe make certain resources require a different kind of improvement to harvest.

When you build buildings that you already have one or more of, it seems the displayed yield the building would give you is actually the combined yield of when you have the multiple buildings. For example, building the 3rd stellar market tells me it will give me +9 influence. This is not a big issue but it can be misleading, especially for beginning players.

This can be changed, but if I do, the regular mouseover for the list of buildings in a city will also be changed.

An easy solution is to make it say something like this:

+2 :food: (Individual)
+8 :food: (Grouped)

I used food as an example since the FF influence icon isn't a CFC emoticon.

Under the pedia entry for slave state, the link to Draft does not work.

Fixed, thanks.

For the oil resource, I thought it might make more sense to use the usual oil picture rather than the coal picture. I suppose most of the resource pictures have been chosen the way they have because their actual decals on the game board look appropriate for outer space. The oil splodge probably wouldn't like right.

What we could do is use the Oil button/icon but use the Coal graphic. I'll change this in the next version.

In the city screen, it would be nice if the planets you could not work yet were perhaps given a coloured border to indicate that fact. Perhaps the colour could be different depending on what level you need to reach to work the planet.

I don't know about that, but I know I can make the mouseover (that currently displays yields and the planet name) display required culture level.

But all you really have to do right now is see that the planet says "0/0" population under it... still, I guess the information would be useful.

There isn't any breakdown of the trade route modifiers.

Hmm... not sure why. I'm guessing it's been disabled in the code somewhere but I don't know why it would be.

I won by cultural victory 291 turns into the game barely trying. I was playing Noble so that could be part of the reason why but I never put the culture slider above 20% and to be honest I didn't even try to get that victory. This leads me to believe the cultural victory thresholds aren't very balanced yet. I even had the civ that had a cultural penalty as a trait.

I guess the cultural thresholds need changing, then...

Is there any way to use population points that do not fit on any of the planets because they're all full? Towards the end of the game, with the civics I was running and the way I'd developed my cities, I was deliberately trying to build unhealthy buildings (factory and manufacturing plant) to slow the growth of my cities when they were getting to the size where growth was pointless. There was basically no negative consequence of building unhealthy buildings. This doesn't feel right.

We can add back specialists.

I think God-Emperor added them, but I'm not sure. I know deanej and JEELEN added them to Star Trek and MOO2Civ respectively, though. So it can be done.
 
I have noticed the building hover text problem before. It seems to alter what is shown in the pop-up help for the build list icons based on how many you have already built, so if you have built none or 1 they appear correct, but if you have built 2 they show double, and if you have built 3 they show triple. Strangely, it seems that some properties are multiplied by the number of buildings that already exist and some are not - if I'm remembering right, the influence points are influenced (so to speak) by the number of buildings but +1:) or +1:health: are not. So the hover help for the Sports Arena shows 1 influence and 1 :) if you have not built any or have built one, but 2 influence and 1 :) if you already have two. In fact, it might only be the reported influence value that changes with the number of buildings.

I have not added specialists, although I often consider adding in at least the citizen. I wasn't certain if excess population was actually being put into citizens - they do still appear down on the bottom row of the Domestic Advisor screen when you pick a city and it always shows a count of "0/0" and the "+" button does nothing. Currently excess population does nothing for you because the citizen is defined to produce no benefit (the settings are all set to 0 in CIV4SpecialistInfos.xml) - changing them from 0 may not directly do anything (my though would be to make them give +1:hammers: and +1:commerce: each) and would probably require altering the updatePlotYield to get the yields for the specialist and the count of specialists and apply the yield changes manually. Somewhere on the city screen some indicator of what the specialist does (as a mouse-over pop-up) and count of them would have to be added. With only one type, or even 2 or 3, there ought to be room to add it somewhere - a single row the hight of the icon and not very wide.
 
Thanks for the feedback!
No problem!
All three of these are good ideas, but I'm not quite sure how to do any of them, I'm afraid.
That's alright. Keep them noted somewhere as possible future things to investigate in case you or I learn how to do it. ;)
Assuming they're automated, you could un-automate them. If they're un-automated, don't do anything with them, keep them in your solar systems.
D'oh! Actually I'm not automating them! It goes against every bone in my body to have construction ships sitting around doing nothing because I know that for the sake of improving my chances to win it's better to build roads on useless tiles in my territory. It's not completely useless because when enemies invade sometimes they waste time pillaging those roads so it acts as somewhat of a buffer. Of course, it's also useful to increase your mobility near your borders where you need to keep fighting off barbs. Just like in BtS it can be wise to go around building extra farms outside of BFCs to attract pillaging in case of an attack (that way they're not pillaging your BFC tiles), when your workers have nothing to do. The difference is that in BtS it's pretty rare to have workers with nothing to do if you build the right number and keep expanding.

Perhaps it will just take me some adjustment getting used to the number of construction ships I need. I do admit that last game I was a bit slow getting starbases up so next time I'll get into that earlier.

The idea I'd had, which I don't think is a very good one really, is for construction ships to be able to sit in cities providing some sort of benefit like +1:hammers: or +1:commerce: (the commerce would be more balanced IMO).

A better idea. What about giving them the ability to speed up the repair of damaged ships? I don't think that would be overpowered. I'd recommend a bonus of probably 10% like an ordinary medic. This could diminish the usefulness of proper medics but at least in FF you can get the 20% medic with as little as 5xp on a scout. Make the bonuses not stack. That way you won't have construction ships completely replacing the role of combat medics but the construction ship medic would be useful in helping the destroyers cleaning up barbs for example. The easiest way to do this would be by simply giving the construction ship the medic 1 promotion (I'm forgetting the FF equivalent names! :lol:). It's possible to do that, right?


That is a good point, though- at present, construction ships are good for three things: starbases, resources, and routes. Since cities don't work plots regular improvements which increase yields are useless. But we can add other types of weird improvements, like other kinds of space stations. Or maybe make certain resources require a different kind of improvement to harvest.
Another option could be a 3rd type of route. Maybe warp lanes could be toned down a bit and a 3rd type of route replace the role of the warp lane. I'd imagine this would require a fair bit of new graphics though and that's probably out of the question at this point.
This can be changed, but if I do, the regular mouseover for the list of buildings in a city will also be changed.

An easy solution is to make it say something like this:

I used food as an example since the FF influence icon isn't a CFC emoticon.
Yeah, as someone noted it does seem to only be for influence it gets it wrong. It doesn't bother me much - I mentioned it because I assumed it was a fairly straight forward bug.
What we could do is use the Oil button/icon but use the Coal graphic. I'll change this in the next version.
Neato.
I had also thought a better picture could be used for water. I don't think it would be hard to find or create a nice blue image of a tear drop shape that would be more fitting IMO. All of the images used for resources I'd get used to if playing the mod enough, of course. It's just that coming from playing BtS so much you just can't help but automatically think you're looking at silver and aluminum - not oxygen and water.
I don't know about that, but I know I can make the mouseover (that currently displays yields and the planet name) display required culture level.

But all you really have to do right now is see that the planet says "0/0" population under it... still, I guess the information would be useful.
Good point on the 0/0. I didn't really think of that. But a number for the influence level needed in the hover would be almost ideal actually.

There seems to be room for only 8 planets in that bottom corner, so I'm assuming it's illegal to have 9 planets in a star system. Anyway, I've never seen more than 7 planets so there's always room for at least 1 gap in that list. I would suggest finding a way to make that gap always separate the level 2 and level 3 planets but I'm not sure if that is even possible. I guess it would be in the python somewhere?

Hmm... not sure why. I'm guessing it's been disabled in the code somewhere but I don't know why it would be.
Not sure.

While we're on the topic of trade routes, I kinda felt during my last game that the buildings that gave +50% trade route modifier were fairly weak compared to all the other build options. Except for the civ that gets the bonus trade route per city, +50% trade route modifier looks like it will provide +1:commerce: at most for most of the game. A mag lev on a 3 pop planet seems an obvious better investment.

I'm not sure whether boosting the size of the trade modifier is a good idea either though. My thought is to go with an additional trade route with one of the middle game techs - perhaps one of the techs which is a bit weak at the moment, or one that makes the most sense realism wise (if realism is something you can talk about!).
I guess the cultural thresholds need changing, then...
I'd probably double them at least. It will probably take a more drastic change than that but it'd be a start. :)
Note I played normal speed in my game so I haven't tried doing any of the math for other speeds yet - I'm not sure if they'd all scale the same way.
We can add back specialists.

To be honest, I'd say keep specialists out of the game. It doesn't make much sense realism-wise and really I think I like the difference from BtS. For once, the commerce sliders actually mean a lot and you don't get a crapload of espionage or beakers when those sliders are on 0 like you can in BtS.

To this point I haven't commented much on the actual gameplay so I might do that quickly now.

I've enjoyed in particular the building decisions a lot more than in BtS. I especially love the fact there is no granary because in BtS it was pretty much always an optimal first or second build (ignoring unit builds). Some of it could be put down to me getting used to the strategy still but in general I think build decisions are very interesting in Final Frontier (Plus).

I also think promotions (part upgrades!:)) are much more interesting. The first strike promotions seem more balanced than they are in BtS, for example. I like the fact that if you take a promotion like the +20% vs. light ships it's actually useful for the entire game because as units get more expensive and more powerful they are still in the same unit categories. Unlike in BtS where Cover and Shock become useless promotions before long.

The combat promos (i.e. upgraded weapons) seem well balanced because the defender modifiers can get pretty large. For example, if you use a destroyer to attack a planetary defense ship in a city, it might be around a 200% defense modifier. This means +10% strength is probably almost as good as +20% city attack. IMO this is going to reward those people who know how combat modifiers work, more than anything else, but I won't complain about that! That reminds me - putting in Advanced Combat Odds would be cool IMO... I might look into it if others are interested.

Of course, a lot of these things I like about FF are not necessarily your work so I'm not giving credit where it isn't due. I do want to mention these things though because I think they're important and strong parts of the Final Frontier gameplay that shouldn't be changed much if at all.

I have noticed the building hover text problem before. It seems to alter what is shown in the pop-up help for the build list icons based on how many you have already built, so if you have built none or 1 they appear correct, but if you have built 2 they show double, and if you have built 3 they show triple. Strangely, it seems that some properties are multiplied by the number of buildings that already exist and some are not - if I'm remembering right, the influence points are influenced (so to speak) by the number of buildings but +1:) or +1:health: are not. So the hover help for the Sports Arena shows 1 influence and 1 :) if you have not built any or have built one, but 2 influence and 1 :) if you already have two. In fact, it might only be the reported influence value that changes with the number of buildings.

I have not added specialists, although I often consider adding in at least the citizen. I wasn't certain if excess population was actually being put into citizens - they do still appear down on the bottom row of the Domestic Advisor screen when you pick a city and it always shows a count of "0/0" and the "+" button does nothing. Currently excess population does nothing for you because the citizen is defined to produce no benefit (the settings are all set to 0 in CIV4SpecialistInfos.xml) - changing them from 0 may not directly do anything (my though would be to make them give +1:hammers: and +1:commerce: each) and would probably require altering the updatePlotYield to get the yields for the specialist and the count of specialists and apply the yield changes manually. Somewhere on the city screen some indicator of what the specialist does (as a mouse-over pop-up) and count of them would have to be added. With only one type, or even 2 or 3, there ought to be room to add it somewhere - a single row the hight of the icon and not very wide.
I think +1:hammers: and +1:commerce: sounds pretty reasonable for a default citizen specialist. I'm pretty sure I'd still pretty much ignore those and go for huge production bonuses through massive :yuck: accumulation but at least I'd know it's not completely without consequence. By the time you're paying 700:hammers: for a factory you will be more likely to start thinking twice about whether you really need it anyway.
 
An idea:

I mentioned before an idea to colour the border of the planets in the city screen that you can't yet work. What about instead just colouring the text "0/0"? Something like orange for level 2 that can't be worked and red for level 3 that can't be worked.

EDIT...
Some more ideas/suggestions which are a lot more straightforward.

First of all, in GlobalDefines, I'd change...

Code:
	<Define>
		<DefineName>CITY_SCREEN_CLICK_WILL_EXIT</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>0</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>
back to 1 again. Being able to click in the middle of the screen to exit means I don't have to hold my finger over the escape button all the time and I don't have to click the minimap which takes me to the exact spot I point on the map instead of the next active unit.

I don't see any reason it should be kept disabled...

I'm not a big fan of the way the camera is fixed at 45% degrees to the board. I'd go with:
Code:
	<Define>
		<DefineName>CAMERA_UPPER_PITCH</DefineName>
		<fDefineFloatVal>-70.0</fDefineFloatVal>
	</Define>
	<Define>
		<DefineName>CAMERA_LOWER_PITCH</DefineName>
		<fDefineFloatVal>-40.0</fDefineFloatVal>
	</Define>
so that zooming in and out feels a bit nicer. This is a matter of taste and not a big deal, of course. Anyone can change it for themselves anyway.
 
Hi Guys, just finished downloading your mod, going to try and incorporate our B5 mod into it.
I asked a question in another thread by Classic Thunder about Civ specific Tech trees (see this link)Question is their any possibility of getting this to work as i've described?

I also posed another question in another thread about the Scrolling Civics screen, i did have a go at including this in the B5 mod but due to inexperience i made a mess of it. Again, any chance of including this in any future versions of FF+?

Looking forward to seeing more of your work.
 
I'm not sure why the city screen click to exit is the way it is but I kept it in Star Trek as I'm sure there was a reason for including it (it's possible that there were issues with the planet selection buttons or something). As for the camera angles, I think it has to do with the graphics. Things get really weird when you view them from the side (try using flying camera to see what I mean, assuming your graphics card doesn't crap out before that happens).
 
D'oh! Actually I'm not automating them! It goes against every bone in my body to have construction ships sitting around doing nothing because I know that for the sake of improving my chances to win it's better to build roads on useless tiles in my territory. It's not completely useless because when enemies invade sometimes they waste time pillaging those roads so it acts as somewhat of a buffer. Of course, it's also useful to increase your mobility near your borders where you need to keep fighting off barbs. Just like in BtS it can be wise to go around building extra farms outside of BFCs to attract pillaging in case of an attack (that way they're not pillaging your BFC tiles), when your workers have nothing to do. The difference is that in BtS it's pretty rare to have workers with nothing to do if you build the right number and keep expanding.

Perhaps it will just take me some adjustment getting used to the number of construction ships I need. I do admit that last game I was a bit slow getting starbases up so next time I'll get into that earlier.

The idea I'd had, which I don't think is a very good one really, is for construction ships to be able to sit in cities providing some sort of benefit like +1:hammers: or +1:commerce: (the commerce would be more balanced IMO).

A better idea. What about giving them the ability to speed up the repair of damaged ships? I don't think that would be overpowered. I'd recommend a bonus of probably 10% like an ordinary medic. This could diminish the usefulness of proper medics but at least in FF you can get the 20% medic with as little as 5xp on a scout. Make the bonuses not stack. That way you won't have construction ships completely replacing the role of combat medics but the construction ship medic would be useful in helping the destroyers cleaning up barbs for example. The easiest way to do this would be by simply giving the construction ship the medic 1 promotion (I'm forgetting the FF equivalent names! :lol:). It's possible to do that, right?


Another option could be a 3rd type of route. Maybe warp lanes could be toned down a bit and a 3rd type of route replace the role of the warp lane. I'd imagine this would require a fair bit of new graphics though and that's probably out of the question at this point.

Yes, it should be possible to do the repair mechanics. Alternatively, Construction Ships could be able to build a "Repair Station", an automated facility that does this.

I don't like the idea of a third route, honestly. I'd rather add other improvements/space stations. For instance, the Star Trek Mod has a Sensor Relay that provides increased line of sight. I like this idea.

Yeah, as someone noted it does seem to only be for influence it gets it wrong. It doesn't bother me much - I mentioned it because I assumed it was a fairly straight forward bug.

Aha. It's because building yields are done via python since yields are done via python. So the helper text says "+2 food per planet", since Jon Shafer probably used the <Help> tag. But commerces, like influence, aren't done via python. So they use the regular help text, autogenerated by the DLL.

I'll change that help text to work as I described.

Neato.
I had also thought a better picture could be used for water. I don't think it would be hard to find or create a nice blue image of a tear drop shape that would be more fitting IMO. All of the images used for resources I'd get used to if playing the mod enough, of course. It's just that coming from playing BtS so much you just can't help but automatically think you're looking at silver and aluminum - not oxygen and water.

Dune Wars uses a tear drop for their "Water" yield (which replaces water). I think we should use that.

Good point on the 0/0. I didn't really think of that. But a number for the influence level needed in the hover would be almost ideal actually.

There seems to be room for only 8 planets in that bottom corner, so I'm assuming it's illegal to have 9 planets in a star system. Anyway, I've never seen more than 7 planets so there's always room for at least 1 gap in that list. I would suggest finding a way to make that gap always separate the level 2 and level 3 planets but I'm not sure if that is even possible. I guess it would be in the python somewhere?

An idea:

I mentioned before an idea to colour the border of the planets in the city screen that you can't yet work. What about instead just colouring the text "0/0"? Something like orange for level 2 that can't be worked and red for level 3 that can't be worked.

Correct, as set up there can only be 8 planets in a system. I don't know if the game refuses to generate 8, but in a scenario a system could have all 8 planets, so the break idea wouldn't work.

I like your second idea better. Will do that too.

To be honest, I'd say keep specialists out of the game. It doesn't make much sense realism-wise and really I think I like the difference from BtS. For once, the commerce sliders actually mean a lot and you don't get a crapload of espionage or beakers when those sliders are on 0 like you can in BtS.

I like specialists- why don't they make sense "realism-wise"?

Of course, a lot of these things I like about FF are not necessarily your work so I'm not giving credit where it isn't due. I do want to mention these things though because I think they're important and strong parts of the Final Frontier gameplay that shouldn't be changed much if at all.

Yes- unless you're appreciating the faster game, better AI, or wormhole mechanics, the praise goes to Jon Shafer. :)
 
grrrr. I just made a big long post and the browser screwed up as I posted. Oh well, here's the jist of it...

Good idea on the construction ships being able to build things like sensor relays or repair stations etc. - sounds good. I'm having second thoughts about my earlier suggestion of giving them medic 1. Especially if you put repair stations in, you don't want too many things providing repairs (starbases and cities already do as well).

My other comments were mainly about the specialists idea.
I think the scale in FF and how it's different to BtS is my main reason for specialists being less realistic. I think when you play a historical game looking at how civs developed on Earth it makes sense to include specialists because once the population didn't all have to work the farms or whatever they could take their various specialist roles. In FF the population points we talk about are populating entire planets. I just assumed that given the number of people involved it was implied the specialists were necessarily among them. What would a scientist specialist be in FF? 10 million population up in a spaceship studying science?

If a planet provides +2:hammers: for each population point working it, how can you explain an engineer providing +2:hammers: from the ether?

It's up to you of course. These sorts of things are all abstraced enough that you could go insane trying to reason everything in terms of realism. If you have a well thought out way to implement specialists it might be worthwhile but personally I don't think the game really needs it. "Less is more" is one of the main principles I try to stick to in PIG Mod so perhaps that bias is creeping into my opinions on this mod too. The aims of this mod and PIG Mod are probably very similar by the sounds of things. That is, you aren't trying to make the game too different from the original mod - just fix it in the places where it's really lacking or could do with an important improvement (e.g. BBAI and CAR).

Please correct me if I'm mistaken though - I may be making the wrong assumptions about the scope of the mod.

EDIT
Also, while playing the game I have felt the choice of what planet to work has usually been an interesting one. I think the yields for the planets are fairly well balanced. Apart from the Earth-like planet I don't think any of the planets are the clear best or clear worst (I think it's well justified making a hospitable Earth-like planet having probably the best yield). Specialists won't necessarily muck up that balance but they would certainly change it.

EDIT2
I just realised that when you talk about putting specialists in the game you're probably not talking about specialists that do the same sort of thing as in BtS.

Suppose for example a specialist type was "Light ship expert" (not a very creative name :lol:). Maybe something like +10% for the construction of light ships. That way it wouldn't be too powerful when a star system's population is fairly low but after a larger population is there along with a higher base hammer rate, the specialist may come as a preferred alternative to working a hammer low planet (like the one that has 2:food: and no hammers).

Some well thought out specialists types would be good. Did you have any particular types in mind? I suppose a spy specialist would make a fair bit of sense.
 
Yeah, the ice planet has a particularly low yield (2.0.3), so it tends to be less productive than other planets. Still, it has its uses, and the food can certainly be welcome if there are few sources for it.

No real point to that last paragraph, just musing.

Also, with regards to the extra population, I realize now, all that population has got to live somewhere. Maybe it's in orbital habitats. Maybe it's on asteroid colonies. All I know is, every person has to live somewhere (unless you're homeless, but even then, you're a resident of planet Earth, even if you're not a productive one). Specialists wouldn't be that huge of a stretch if you justified them like that.

Still, I'm not advocating one way or the other here. Just my two pence.
 
Here is my FF mod-mod, such as it is.

The installation instructions are about the same as for FF+:
1) Copy Final Frontier, calling the new copy "Finaler Frontier"
2) Copy the contents of the 7-Zip file over the top, allowing all replacements.
3) Play.

Edit: attachment deleted since there is a new version (there had been 20 downloads). The next version (v0.2) can be found here
 
Code:
<iBarbarianPhase>1</iBarbarianPhase>
I found this in the CIV4UnitInfos.XML whilst merging the B5 mod with FF+, what's it for? i didn't see anything describing its function in the spoiler in post #1.

Edit: Hi guys, i've finished doing the merge of FF+ and the B5 mod but it now fails to load. I've run the Civ Checker and it's found nothing wrong with the XML files which leaves me with the problem being something to do with either the SDK (i haven't touched this), Python or the DLL. Are there any checkers that i can DL and run to test the non xml elements of the mod?
 
PsiCorps said:
Code:
<iBarbarianPhase>1</iBarbarianPhase>

I found this in the CIV4UnitInfos.XML whilst merging the B5 mod with FF+, what's it for? i didn't see anything describing its function in the spoiler in post #1.

Edit: Hi guys, i've finished doing the merge of FF+ and the B5 mod but it now fails to load. I've run the Civ Checker and it's found nothing wrong with the XML files which leaves me with the problem being something to do with either the SDK (i haven't touched this), Python or the DLL. Are there any checkers that i can DL and run to test the non xml elements of the mod?

It doesn't do anything- it's the remnant of an attempt to merge barbarian spawning with the SDK. I couldn't get the system to work as originally coded, and so removed the functional parts of the barbarian phase tag, but for v1.1 I left the tag around. (Because it meant that when I transferred to an era-based system for v1.2, I would know what units were meant to be in which era).


What errors do you get? A CTD when loading the game? At what point of the loading process?

To debug the DLL, you'd need to compile a debug DLL with the FF+ sources using VC++ (Microsoft Visual C++). Refar's guide is useful for setting up things, and for doing the actual debugging itself.

I'd provide a debug DLL but I no longer have one available for 1.1, as I've already compiled debug DLLs (not to mention regular DLLs) for the next version. In the future I'll provide one with each release.
 
Top Bottom