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Adding my planet Mod to Final Frontier Plus

planetmaker

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 28, 2009
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A long time ago I made a mod mod for Final frontier focusing on planets only. I have recreated that mod again, but adding a few more things.
The nutrition facility has been replaced with the Atmospheric Processor. It enhances the atmosphere of a planet, or the hab moon of a gas giant. Planets with it have a thicker glow to them, or the hab moon of a gas giant. Also the mag rail has been moved to the hab moon too! See the pic below

Here is a brief overview of the planets

Planets, by type

Grays - Barren, limited atmospheres and food production. Silicate crusts hamper mining efforts, with limited access to volatiles. The most common type of planet, with a lot of variety. Occasionally they have CO2 atmospheres and can grow algae foods without an atmospheric processor.
Typical food/prod/commerce 0,3,3, Totals range from 5-8.

Browns - easy to colonize, browns have great potential. Their CO2 atmospheres are ideal for the construction of pressurized greenhouses. Easy to mine with low pressure suits, they usually have good production potential. With an atmospheric processor they can produce a surplus of food.
Typical values 2 food, 4 - 7 production, 0 - 3 commerce.

Toxic worlds - Hostile to colonists, they are usually harvested for their highly sought after volatiles. They have a negative food value - you have to import food to feed the colonists..
Typical values -2 food, 0 production, 8 to 10 commerce.

Lava worlds - Typically close to stars, these worlds are dangerous to colonize due to high temperatures, molten surfaces, and high tectonic activity. However, easy access to ore and minerals makes their production potential the greatest of all the worlds.
Typical values -1 food, 7 - 9 Production, 1 -2 Commerce.

Ice worlds - On the other side of the system to lava worlds are the ice worlds. They have mixed atmospheres and good access to exotic volatiles and water. Good luck mining them, all the good stuff is buried under hundreds of Km of ice. However, despite their cold temperatures, they are good places for greenhouses as there is no lack of water for growing things.
Typical values 2 -3 food, 0 - 1 Production, 4 - 8 commerce.

Desert/Martian
These worlds contain fair CO2 atmospheres and have great potential. Desert worlds have limited access to minerals, but have good solar power potential. Martian worlds are colder, but have greater production potential
Typical values 3 food, 2 - 5 production, 2 - 5 Commerce.

Home worlds
These green worlds are highly sought after. They are balanced when it comes to food, production and commerce.
Typical values 4 food, 2 - 5 production, 2 - 5 Commerce.

Gaia worlds
These worlds are the cream of the crop. Be careful with them, industry can easily pollute them.
Typical values 5 food, 2 - 5 production, 2 - 5 Commerce.

Swamp worlds
These worlds offer great growth potential, but their boggy landscapes have little in the way of commercial value, mainly revolving selling cute pets. And mining them? Forget it.
Typical values 6-7 food, 0 - 1 production, 1 - 2 Commerce.

Gas Giants.
You cant live on a gas giant, but their moons can be colonized, and their vast reserves of hydrogen gas can be scooped from their atmospheres. Systems without them are very poor indeed. Without lunar atmospheric processors, food usually has to be imported, but there is great potential for commerce and raw materials.
Typical values -1 food, 1 - 8 production, 5 - 14 Commerce.

Ideally I'd like to make more buildings, and restrict them to certain planets. Also rather than have the toxics have -2 or -3 food, I'd like to be able to assign negative health to them a bit like flood plains.
 

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Updated - with star trek class definitions for the planets, and more moons. Some gas giants have 3 now. An extra building has been added, the pressurised greenhouse, and the atmospheric processor building moved up the tech tree.

If people are happy with the mod, I can try to integrate it with final frontier - a lot of balancing will be needed because of the high production values of the planets...
 

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a lot of balancing will be needed because of the high production values of the planets...
Yeah, this is ridiculous and would require balancing everything, including trade route values, tech costs and espionage missions.
 
Thanks Mr Smith, I am currently addressing this now that I have figured out how to restrict buildings to planet types.
Think of the values on the planets above as 'potentials', what they can produce with the correct, and appropriately expensive buildings. They will start with mundane values, and low max population points. E.g. Lava planet 0,5,1, pop 2-4 depending on size.

So - a quick update.

'Normal' buildings now restricted to Home, Gia, and Swamp planets, which start with values more akin to the original planets - home 3,2,2, gia 4,2,1, swamp 5,0,1
They can build nutrition facilities, sports arenas, banks, universities, mag lev's and satellites, basically all the normal stuff
Greys, Browns, Lavas, Deserts, ices, toxics all have their own buildings - so you can specialize according to what your solar system randomly gives you.

My plan, once I tidy the buildings and sort the planets production values, I'll upload what I have, then work on an additional terraforming tech tree, and move the buildings to that. They are currently scattered over the existing technologies making them quite busy.
 

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E.g. Lava planet 0,5,1, pop 2-4
That's not mundane at all with original food to grow and production values. Having even 1 population produce 5 hammers without any improvement is huge, can cause a snowball easily.
 
How about -2,4,1? Original gray is 0,3,3
Much more reasonable. Still have no idea what the final goal is for everything that you are doing. For a mod to this old and troubled game to gain and grow a community, it should have at least a battle system comparable to C2C's with flanking, early withdrawal and preferably Zone of Control.
 
The goal is simple, just to make a planet mod. I enjoy the mods around here, but see not much in the way of altering the planets. I thought i would give it a go.

I am not intending to go beyond modding planets, buildings and tech trees as I think I might be biting off more than I can chew. Hopefully I will have time this week or next to polish things up, and release another version. Once that's done I will look at making tech tree entries, and finally a way to integrate it into Final Frontier Plus.
 
Here is version 2
The changes are:
Planets now have sensible values (Thanks Mr Smith for keeping me right!)
Gas Giants and large terrestrial worlds need outposts built before you can use them. Gas giants have a size class J,S or T and have a major moon type, either class d,l,p,g, or h(the coveted rare martian moon...)
38 Buildings added (5 or 6 for each planet type)
8 Technologies Added - you will have to research the appropriate technologies before you can properly exploit each planet type. So It would be a good idea to check your star system before beginning research!
Cvgameutils.py has been modified to restrict building types to each of the planet types.
Enjoy.
I have added the planet spoilers.txt - I hope you will play first before reading it haha
 

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and finally a way to integrate it into Final Frontier Plus.
If you ever start making DLL changes, please start with Kek-mod.
Here is version 2
Well, it's pretty impressive, though I still don't like how high some base values are. You really need to increase food consumed per pop, as well as increase civic upkeep per pop (which can't be reduced like maintenance). The only thing high values are good for is reducing relative value of Forge unique mines, otherwise Less is More is just healthier. Check my History Rewritten modmod if you'd like multiple examples on how it works - just reading through changes may be enough. I'll certainly make a pass over your mod, when it gets close to completion - Final Frontier deserves more love and is truly special. Just reworking Slavery as Cloning would do a lot of good and I've became quite experienced with balancing whipping. Still, war is Civ4's weakest point, no amount of economic refinement will make up for it, since you can easily lose a huge amount of hammers or even everything you invested into a start system over a dice roll.
 
Thanks Mr Smith - I will look into increasing food consumed per pop and increase civic upkeep per pop. I could just subtract 1 from all the planets food output - but this can slow down starting colonies until the atmospheric processor is available.
Do you have any suggestions regarding initial values? Perhaps I could make the buildings more powerful and the base value of the planets less? I would need more gas giant buildings then, as at the moment there is only really distributed moon outposts, and the hydrogen ram scoop.

I tried to start the gas giants at 0 pop - so you had to get the right tech and buildings just to start, but there is an issue with the game putting the start buildings on the wrong planet if there is a food gas giant in the inner solar system. I tried to get the python code to put habitations on as the start buildings, but it seems to get confused about which is the best planet, and not put any buildings on at all. It only seems to work if the innermost planet is the gas giant.

I'm going to have a look at caveman to cosmos and history rewritten. Perhaps I could get some inspiration regarding combat... Though if I was to get into creating new units I would need help as I have very poor 3D skills.

I had a go at trying to get planets into Final frontier plus - but have had no luck so far. I tried to start small, with just the size changes, but to no avail. I'll try again at the weekend.
 
I could just subtract 1 from all the planets food output
Well, it really depends on whether you want to make use of multipliers or not.
there is an issue with the game putting the start buildings on the wrong planet
You could try asking in Quick Modding Questions. Are your buildings valid for canConstruct? In any case you could make separate buildings valid everywhere just for the start at -1 hammers cost or just add yields to the Palace.
Do you have any suggestions regarding initial values?
I would make them as small as possible with a budget 1 or 2 yields above consumed food per pop, any extra should come at the cost of minuses somewhere else. Depending on desired population caps and how far they can be expanded, innate population space should be worth 1 or 2 yields too.
Perhaps I could make the buildings more powerful and the base value of the planets less?
Yeah, exactly, but special cases where basic yields are high, yet you need to finish a building to gain most of it's intended population cap, are fine too.
Though if I was to get into creating new units I would need help as I have very poor 3D skills.
Existing units are fine, it's just flanking and early withdrawal would be very benefitial to the overall gameplay. Then there's also a problem of disarming collateral damage strike, especially for the Forge, and I borrowed a Civ3 mechanic to solve it in HR, but I hasn't considered how it would apply in FF.
I had a go at trying to get planets into Final frontier plus - but have had no luck so far. I tried to start small, with just the size changes, but to no avail.
You mean you only added them in the basic FF currently? What exactly is the problem?
 
I could just subtract 1 from all the planets food output
Well, it really depends on whether you want to make use of multipliers or not.


I decided to just remove 1 food from all non home, gia and swamp planets. Gray, Brown, Lava and Ice planets get + 1 from their outposts, and mars and desert planets get + 1 from water management. All planets except toxic, gia and swamp can build atmospheric processors. I even managed to get the water management building to change the texture on mars and desert worlds, adding oceans to their models on screen! To help expansion in the middle game there are silos now that give a small carryover. I made each citizen consume 2 food now.

Perhaps I could make the buildings more powerful and the base value of the planets less?
I would make them as small as possible with a budget 1 or 2 yields above consumed food per pop, any extra should come at the cost of minuses somewhere else. Depending on desired population caps and how far they can be expanded, innate population space should be worth 1 or 2 yields too.


I further reduced the planet yields, and made the penalty's to food and commerce on lava planets, and food and production on toxic worlds higher.

Though if I was to get into creating new units I would need help as I have very poor 3D skills.
Existing units are fine, it's just flanking and early withdrawal would be very benefitial to the overall gameplay. Then there's also a problem of disarming collateral damage strike, especially for the Forge, and I borrowed a Civ3 mechanic to solve it in HR, but I hasn't considered how it would apply in FF.

- I would love to see the coding for your units to add flanking and withdrawal. Perhaps I could to to give it a go...

I've not had time to look again at adding to Final frontier plus...
 
I would love to see the coding for your units to add flanking and withdrawal
I only added counterbattery strike written by BlackImperator, I don't have anything to do with C2C's development. It's code is public, though.
 
Hi
Mod looks great. I'd like to play it with my friend or maybe help you a bit.

I think one more thing that needs a change is possibility of doing early tech snowballing with scouting ships. This often leads to a situation where one colony discovers 4 of 5 values just from wreckage and researching a few techs, additionally it's likely that it has many credits (and essentially enters exploration era when everyone else is in isolation one). This problem scales with map size.

I also recently made small changes to Final Frontier (I modified the kek-mod, you may have seen my message in its thread). They are mostly bugfixes or small upgrades (there is 1 useless change) and are small, but I added 3 events (and enabled existing). I thing the biggest change I made is making experience float (I did this because I love to use squadrons, however, they got no experience from aistrikes, now they do get).
Attached files that I changed and all XML and python ones.
 

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I've played one game on the latest available version on marathon.

Note that I won rather due to blitzkrieg with bombers than due to having a developed warship producton, there was only one typical siege with high losses only due to system being out of range of bombers- AI had no fighters and destroyers, I often see AI without any protection like that even if I extensively use bombers (it only builds SDN).

About planets I haven't really used buildings added by this mod except d class because I haven't researched required technologies- I haven't made it even into exploration era.
Maybe they are available a bit too late?
A feature that would be helpful when conquerng systems would be an option of rebuilding basic building provided by colonization- mining facility and greenhouse. I thinkt that it was developed in kek mod but not finished.
I found one another bug, I don't know whether it is solved in final frontier plus- I can build on planet I can't build on
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Hi
Mod looks great. I'd like to play it with my friend or maybe help you a bit.

I think one more thing that needs a change is possibility of doing early tech snowballing with scouting ships. This often leads to a situation where one colony discovers 4 of 5 values just from wreckage and researching a few techs, additionally it's likely that it has many credits (and essentially enters exploration era when everyone else is in isolation one). This problem scales with map size.

I also recently made small changes to Final Frontier (I modified the kek-mod, you may have seen my message in its thread). They are mostly bugfixes or small upgrades (there is 1 useless change) and are small, but I added 3 events (and enabled existing). I thing the biggest change I made is making experience float (I did this because I love to use squadrons, however, they got no experience from aistrikes, now they do get).
Attached files that I changed and all XML and python ones.
I will certainly take a look thanks. Scouting at the start is very hit and miss, sometimes I find myself with a few service parts at the start, upgrade my scouts engines and basically have a super scout! Sometimes I really fall behind because I just get star charts (which are pretty useless in the un-modded game)
 
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