Kardashev 3 Mod (or, yet another space mod) development thread

[Bluemofia]

Thanks WildWeazel, I'll try not to disappoint.

This week was rather busy, so I wasn't able to make much progress. I'll also be going on a trip to Chicago for my wedding, and then to St. Louis for the solar eclipse, so I'll be gone for 10 days.

I haven't tried increasing the size of the stars yet, as it's a fairly big change (no pun intended) which requires more time than I had recently, so I worked on the black hole shadows instead:

I've modified the black hole slightly so that it combines it with the resources_shadow.pcx so it blends better with the terrain.

I'll probably try to integrate something similar to the other planets and binary stars, as it smooths over the transition a bit more.

 

[Bluemofia]

Back from vacation.

I tried playing around with the Neutron Star with the shadows, and it did not look that good. I think it is because the shadows don't look too well applied to things that are intended as light sources, which is why the black hole looked good, while the neutron star didn't. I don't have a picture of it, because I did it before I was on vacation, but I'll take a look what happens with one of the stars and one of the planets before abandoning the effort.

 

[Bluemofia]

So here are the planets with a base circular shadow around them:

The shadows are already at the edge of the screen, so I had to move the planets a little bit closer to center them. They didn't end up looking too terrible, so I tried tweaking them like a cone so it looks more like a proper shadow:

Those don't look too well against the bright stars, as there is only a limited area to work with resource graphics, so I settled with a hybrid with a circle, but none at the front, so it is sorta a cone:

In the meantime, I am working on making luxury and strategic resources, and rather than having them be planets, I'm just going the civ 3 base system with an icon representing them. The problem is that, if centered, it will cover up the red dwarves as they are tiny, and if not, they look a bit weird in the trade advisor screen.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Good work. Looking better all the time.

 

[Vuldacon]

Bluemofia... Quite a meritorious endeavor to graphically present a Space Game that will appear and function as desired within the confines and parameters of the Civ Game.
I like your ideas for the Game and I look forward to seeing what you accomplish. The direction you are going with the graphics is looking good and worth your efforts

 

[Bluemofia]

Less of a graphical update, but more of a tech tree update.

I've been working on this for a while now, as deciding on how technology is going to flow allows me to decide what to do about units and buildings, etc. This is only a WIP, but it has the major techs and development themes that I want to cover. It is by no means set in stone, as for example, governments and unique techs based on civs/species (have yet to decide if there are aliens in space yet) are not listed, and there can also be additional dead end techs for Great Wonders that I haven't thought up yet.

Spoiler :

As you can see, there are no psionics in this, as I'm trying to keep it a little bit on the harder side of science, and psionics are really hard for me to handwave.

However, I run into the problem of AIs or sufficiently advanced computing problems. I side-step the issue by having Moore's Law being restricted by physical limitations that are non-trivial to overcome (Ex: You can only shove a certain number of transistors in a given chip area until quantum tunneling prevents the electrons from being contained in circuits, and the chips can only be so big before the speed of light will limit the system clock), and that Quantum Computers aren't magic that some Sci-Fi makes them out to be, just more efficient at different algorithms, but fiendishly difficult to miniaturize until way later. I am considering using True AI tech to allow a SW that legalizes AI and thus doubling pop growth like Longevity, but it will impose some other penalty, such as a massive maintenance cost, generates unhappiness, or a building placed in all cities that decreases production. Alternatively, use it as a research wonder, like Newton's University.

For biology, I take the approach that biology has sufficiently complex interactions that it becomes nearly impossible to predict with certainty what will happen simply because of the sheer number of variables, and thus development is slow enough that it is a scale of diminishing returns. Combined with the limitations of computing, this will drastically slow down the advancement of biology because of these various interactions. You end up getting stuff like cybernetic arms or regrowing lost limbs, but never mind uploading or brain in a WH40K Dreadnought because that is too complex to reliably reproduce. In this game, I primarily take medical advancements as a method to increase happiness (aside from the beginning which allows irrigation and granary equivalents), as medical technology allows people to live longer lives, and the cost to fix a person up from injury or disease to decrease.


Some things which I am trying to figure out, is more of the naval doctrine stuff. Right now, I've got a few techs which I will either stick buildings that auto-produce ships (usually weaker ones, so as to provide supplementary forces not the main combat force), or just use it where units gain some upgrades to them. These have the greatest chance of being changed as they were primarily put in there to provide more fluff for the tech tree.

 

[Bluemofia]

Update: I've been slowly working on stating out units and developing unit lines, and in the meantime collecting and adding units together such that there's some ships to look at when testing.

Spoiler :

Many of these may need to be adjusted in various ways, ranging from removing shadows (as there isn't an overhead sun in a top down galaxy view), resizing (such as the current dreadnought), recoloring, recentering, and making the unit heights more consistent (Some units sit as if they were flat on the ground because they were designed as ships or land units, while others were designed as air units so float above the ground). There are a few other units which were added, but seem to crash the game.

But anyhow, here are a few of the unit lines:
Colony Ship: It is what you expect, a Settler in space. Now comes in higher movement versions after more techs are researched.
Construction Ship: Workers in space. Now with higher techs, you can build faster construction ships in both construction and movement.
Scout Ship: The unarmed Scout. In the late game, also reveals invisible units.
Defense Satellite: The only unit which focuses on defense, and is restricted to sublight travel and cannot move without roads. It has no attack, but later on acquires the ability to bombard.
Destroyer: The earliest military unit you can build that can go on the offense, it has a balanced attack and defense, and fast. However they are relatively weak.
Cruiser: The first military unit focused on the offense, it has a higher attack than defense, and can reliably win vs destroyers.
Battleship: The first ship which requires you to build a hull and upgrade, the Battleship is even more powerful than the cruiser, but it is fairly slow. After developing a more advanced version, existing battleships cannot be refitted or upgrade to the newer version.
Dreadnought: Even more powerful than the Battleship, Dreadnoughts are a more powerful, slower version of the battleship, and with a dramatically increased cost.
Flag Ship: Rather than building an army, MGLs can instead commission Flag Ship Hulls, which upgrade to Flag Ships, which are 25% stronger than your largest vessel. When they win a battle, they use the enslave mechanic to "create" propaganda broadcasts/films which can be sacrificed in cities to increase culture/influence.
System Defense Missiles: Not shown here, but single shot missiles are similar to cruise missiles, but are intended for local defense. They are immobile, and cannot be moved without specialized missile colliers.
Missile Collier: Basically a Freighter, but carries missiles. I have not yet figured out how to implement this, as I still have to test out how the AI responds to land transports.
Replicator: This ship is basically Grey Goo, but assembled into a ship. Popularly depicted grey goo is impractical for a variety of reasons for combat, but combat ships that can rebuild more of themselves from the destroyed remnants of enemy ships are used.
Entangler: This ship has a fairly low attack and defense, but a strong bombard, serving as mobile artillery. Its primary purpose however, is that it serves as a telepad, allowing units to teleport anywhere on the map to it, at the cost of HP.
Line Rider: This ship uses wormholes to travel to empty space, creating one-way wormholes. Essentially a paratrooper.
Reaper: The game's invisible unit, this ship has low attack, but has the ability to stealth attack unarmed units, useful at sniping out Battleship or Dreadnought hulls, or attacking weak units.

Ramjet Carrier: Transport ship to move units across the "water". However, it has only 1 movement, and this cannot really be improved upon.

 

[WildWeazel]

The AI will not build or use land transports, sadly. But couldn't the Missile Collier take the role of nuclear subs for deep space missions?

 

[Bluemofia]

The AI will not build or use land transports, sadly. But couldn't the Missile Collier take the role of nuclear subs for deep space missions?

I was thinking about using Naval Missile Transport AI flag on a land unit (with Quintillus' editor) to see if it will transport missiles that way. Since it is not the traditional land transport, and from what I've read, people haven't tested in this specific combination (as they were going for an APC style usage of land transport, rather than like a Scud Launcher usage), it's at least worth a shot testing.

Alternatively, using Naval Carrier for the Missile Collier, and flagging the missiles as Air Bombard.

The last resort would be flagging them as tactical missiles, and having a pseudo-nuclear submarine (as in, using it for deep space/intergalactic space), but without checking it as a nuclear weapon, and see if the AI will actually use it.

If none of these work, it's not a huge loss, I'll just stick with immobile missiles.

 

[Bluemofia]

Update: I did some trawling for information, and it looks like the Naval Missile Transport AI flag needs to be paired up with the Tactical Nuke strategy. Unfortunately, the AI will think any unit marked as a Tactical Nuke strategy as if it were a nuclear weapon even if it isn't flagged as such.

Since the missiles I am flagging are not intended to be nukes in that it destroys multiple tiles, this won't work. I'll try rigging up a test with the Naval Carrier/Air Bombard setup to see if they will use it that way.

In the meantime, I have added most of the regular improvements (with placeholder graphics), but am working on the Small/Great Wonders, and other associated improvements that rely on them.

Here are the ones that have been added:
Bioforming Institute - Granary. You can't grow food on a planet until you gene mod it to be compatible with the biochemistry of Earth. So thus you are limited to orbital farms for growing food. It's not quite the same as only half of the food consumed when the population grows, but I haven't been able to think of anything better, since food storage is one of those things that were solved long ago.
Orbital Spaceport, Trans-Stellar Corporation, Distribution Node - These trio are the +50% tax improvements.
Solar Collectors, Gravitic Fusion Plant, Kugelblitz Power Plant, Dyson Swarm - These buildings utilize negative maintenance to generate money. In this mod, I am treating commerce as an amalgamation of money and energy. The Dyson Swarm also allows other Dyson Swarm related buildings to be built, and serves as a defensive building
Lagrangian Telescope, Hyperphysics Lab, Ansible - These trio are the +50% science improvements. The Hyperphysics lab also makes very small quantities of negative energy, making it required for a Wormhole Nexus, or other buildings that require exotic matter.
Planetary Network, VR Infrastructure, Gene Therapy Hospital, Cybernetic Clinic - Happiness improvements, although the first two also give a +50% luxury bonus, while the latter two only give singluar happy faces like the base game
Orbital Ring, Antimatter Farm, Nanoforge, Nucleosynthesizer, Stellar Lifting Engine, Star Forge - Various +25% - +50% production buildings. While not restricted to the industrial age or later like a vanilla game, these improvements are more uniformly scattered on the tech tree, making it less of a runaway victory once you hit industrial age.
Sector-Capital Administration, Intervention Battalion, Surveillance Web, Government Broadcast Station - Various buildings to reduce corruption, propaganda, and war weariness. The Government Broadcast Station also doubles sacrifice.
Orbital Fortress, Nicol-Dyson Installation - Purely defensive buildings. The Nicol-Dyson Installation auto-produces immobile missile units without upkeep to bombard nearby units.
Naval Space Station - Barracks equivalent
Edicts: Production, Business, Research Grants, Patron of the Arts, System Lockdown - Requires the Sector-Capital Administration, Edicts are mutually exclusive buildings which cost a high amount for maintenance, but give you a little bit extra of the associated Edict. Either +50% production, tax, science, or a boost to culture and happiness.

System Lockdown is one that is available late game, and at the cost of unhappiness, it prevents stealth attack on the city and auto-produces defensive satellites. I am intending to have capital ships be able to stealth attack their equals and inferiors. For example, a Dreadnought can Stealth attack Cruisers, Destroyers, Battleships and other Dreadnoughts, the Battleship can only Stealth attack Cruisers, Destroyers, and other Battleships, and non-capitals like Cruisers and Destroyers can't at all. This is primarily to simulate capital ship vs capital ship engagements when going head to head, while bombardment is absorbed by screening elements, rather than all combat going through the rote of killing screening elements (non-king units) first before the battleships/dreadnoughts can be engaged.

Other units like the Reaper can stealth attack everything, including non-combat ships, and I am testing out the feasibility of an auto-produced Hidden Nationality unit (Q-Ship) that can only stealth attack economic units. As Capital Ships are king units, they sit at the bottom of a stack, forcing units attacking a city with the System Lockdown Edict to blast away at the screening elements and defensive satellites before they can kill them, not to mention preventing you from focus-firing down units one at a time.

Wormhole Nexus, Artificial Wormhole Nexus, Solar Sail Laser Array - Artificial and regular Wormhole Nexuses are functionally an airport, although the regular one also produces +50% extra commerce due to being a major trade hub, and is available earlier, while the artificial one costs more to maintain and does not give the extra commerce. The regular Wormhole Nexus however, requires black holes in the same city, while the Artificial ones can be built anywhere.
Black Hole Research Station, Neutron Star Research Station - Location dependent research stations, requiring Black Holes and Neutron Stars respectively
Tourist Resort - Requires the Resort World luxury. Provides commerce and happy faces.

 

[Blue Monkey]

If you need any tech icons or splashes (wonder or era) let me know. Something usable may already exist (for example in this set or this one) or can probably be made without too much sweat.

 

[Bluemofia]

Update: Small and Great Wonders:

So after adding this (not yet implemented, it just took a while to gather my thoughts together), I can start polishing up the mod in terms of balance, and start to replace the placeholder graphics, and work on the governments. Afterwards, I can start to work on individual civs and unique buildings/units/etc, and finally decide whether I want aliens or not.


Small Wonders
The Mantle Complex - The Military HQ of civs is now more centralized. The Mantle Complex allows the construction of armies, and it starts auto-producing them at a slow pace (mostly for the benefit of the AI). It is required for many of the later military programs and buildings.
Fleet Logistics - Battlefield Medicine replacement. This SW will be somewhat expensive, because logistics is one of the more complex things to deal with. Requires The Mantle Complex
Advanced Tactical Academy - Stronger armies, requires a victorious army, Mantle Complex.
Letter of Marque - Spawns Q-ships at a slow pace. It is a mid-game invisible, Hidden Nationality economic raiding unit with weak combat stats, intended to attack economic units and disrupt resources without declaring war.

Galactic Confederacy Membership - This is an attempt at implementing Civ 5's World Congress into Civ 3. This small wonder doesn't do anything except produce culture, but it allows you to begin construction of the Treaty small and great wonders, which are various treaties that civs sign and are used to justify things like why you are suddenly better at killing barbarians.
Signator: Vega Convention - Reduces War Weariness. This convention establishes the Rules of War that were originally informally followed, but now codified into international law, sort of like our Geneva Convention.
Signator: Congress of Arcturus - x2 combat vs barbarians. This is similar to the Congress of Vienna and Treaty of Tordesillas, where the galaxy is divided between the major powers (real civs), at the expense of others (the barbarians).
Signator: AI Rights Bill - x2 population growth, very high maint cost. Recognizes AIs as sapient, and are considered citizens just like anyone else. Your population grows faster now, with the extra pops justified as Androids, or dedicated AI.
Signator: Rigel Bioethics Code - 1 citizen made content in all cities. Essentially this is the justification as to why you don't have highly genetically modified humans everywhere, or uplifting dogs or dolphins to become as intelligent as humans.

Naval Tradition - generates more leaders, req. Naval Tradition, victorious army
Special Economic Zone - +1 commerce per tile, 5% interest - Requires 5 Trans-Stellar Corporations
Quadrant Capital - Forbidden Palace equivalent
Tipler Oracle - Allows the Genesis Victory, +100% science - Late game SW that allows the Space Race Victory, where instead of going to Alpha Centauri, you go and build your own universe to lord over. If we're talking galaxy spanning civilizations as is, we might as well dream big.
Intelligence Agency - Same thing s regular civ
Galactic Core Science Institute - 100% science tech, req. Supermassive Black Hole resource in radius.
Matrioska Brain - 100% science, high energy cost, requires Dyson Swarm



Great Wonders
Qianliyan Telescope - 100% research speed. It is a Lagrange Telescope, but at Neptune distance, rather than Earth distance.
Space Elevator - 50% production. Goes obsolete with Gravitics.
Monte Carlo Space Station - high local happiness. Basically Las Vegas/Macau/Earth's Monte Carlo in Space.
The Heinlein Defense Grid - auto-produces defense satellites, and acts as a barracks. Since Naval Space Stations don't come until a little bit later in the game, this is useful for, if anything, a place to upgrade your units.
Crystal Ring - +2 content faces in all cities. Basically an artificial ring around whatever planet it is orbiting.
The Surya Project - +1 commerce per tile, generates a lot of culture. A massive fusion power plant, one of the first of its kind.
The Impossible Dyson - Provides free VR Infrastructure in all cities, and happiness. A simulated VR Dyson Sphere.
The Zevatron - Massive particle accelerator that produces ZeV (10^21, compared to the 10^12 that Fermilab produces) level energies.
The Grand Armada - Free Naval Space Station in all cities. Req. Victorious army.
Multivac - 100% science. Massive interlinked supercomputer.
Darwin's Zoo - Content citizens faces in all cities. Basically a super zoo containing plant and animal analogues from every settled planet in the galaxy.
The Silver River Conglomerate - Free Trans-Stellar Corporations in all cities you own
The Prometheus Shipyard - halves upgrade costs
The Argus Array - Free Lagrange Telescopes in same continent. Communication Wormhole connected telescopes, allowing a galaxy spanning telescope array.
Vulcan's Forge - Free starforges
Ringworld Culture, happy faces in all cities

Treaty: The Oort Compact - Large amounts of culture - defines sovereignty of star systems.
Treaty: Galactic Expo - some Happiness, culture - World Fair that occurs every 100 years, and later adds the Olympics to it.
Treaty: Human Heritage Congress - Large amounts of culture. The idea is that you're declaring certain things and locations to be part of the Human Heritage, as cultural icons and such.
Treaty: Galactic Trade Union - Pays for trade installations.
Treaty: Articles of Federation - Allows Diplomatic Victory. Yes, I had to include a Federation in here somehow.

EDIT: So I had to change the names of some of these slightly because of length limitations

 

[Bluemofia]

Quick update:

Been polishing up the units ever so slightly, and I found that the Ranged Attack Animation is finicky. Because I'm using a lot of units that fire broadsides like many of the water units in Vanilla, I needed all units to have ranged attack animations, otherwise they wouldn't rotate to attack. In my past experience, units that walk up and attack tend to screw up the Rotate Before Attack flag.

However, land units with Ranged Attack Animations and Rotate Before Attack shoot at each other at a 45 degree angle, rather than a 90 degree angle that ships do. They still encounter the problem of rotating before attack when fighting against melee units, but the Rotate Before Attack is broken for land units.

It's funny, because I never remembered the Radar Artillery behaving this way, but it totally does. And because the base game never had you attack the Radar Artillery directly, you never got to witness it being broken.

And of course, I didn't know that this would cause conflict before doing these tests, but looking it up after the fact is obvious.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/two-interest-unit-property-in-the-civ3conquestedit.350249/

It seems like the easiest way around this is to simply remove Rotate Before Attack from everything, and instead creating a Fortify animation of the ships rotating manually to present broadsides, and re-arrange their attack animations to fire at the appropriate direction.

 

[Vuldacon]

You are basically correct Bluemofia... The Radar Artillery (Land Unit) with Rotate Before Attack works against any unit that has the Ranged Attack setting. It isn't the Melee units but rather the Ranged Attack setting that changes the Rotate Before Attack for the Radar Artillery. In other words, the Radar Artillery will rotate correctly against any unit that has Ranged Attack but if the attacking unit does not have Ranged Attack, the Radar Artillery will rotate 45 degrees away from the attacking unit.

...In EFZI2 Elite, the Immobile Radar Artillery at the Military Base has the same problem of rotating too far (45 Degrees) when it is attacked by the basic Zombies because the basic Zombies do not have Ranged Attack. IF I set Ranged Attack for a Zombie Unit, the Radar Artillery correctly rotates.

 

[Bluemofia]

You are basically correct Bluemofia... The Radar Artillery (Land Unit) with Rotate Before Attack works against any unit that has the Ranged Attack setting. It isn't the Melee units but rather the Ranged Attack setting that changes the Rotate Before Attack for the Radar Artillery. In other words, the Radar Artillery will rotate correctly against any unit that has Ranged Attack but if the attacking unit does not have Ranged Attack, the Radar Artillery will rotate 45 degrees away from the attacking unit.

...In EFZI2 Elite, the Immobile Radar Artillery at the Military Base has the same problem of rotating too far (45 Degrees) when it is attacked by the basic Zombies because the basic Zombies do not have Ranged Attack. IF I set Ranged Attack for a Zombie Unit, the Radar Artillery correctly rotates.

Rereading my post, I forgot to mention the second part.

One other thing I found was that Ranged Attack units don't use Ranged Attack if one of them is able to retreat (ex: Move 1 Infantry vs Move 2 Tank). And in this situation with two Ranged Attack animation units that are not doing ranged attack, the Rotate Before Attack flag doesn't trigger.

Because I have several units with movement 1 (mostly defense satellites and early ships), I don't have a guarantee that Ranged Attack Animation will trigger in combat, (and thus the Rotate Before Attack), so to resolve that possibility, I will have to put in a little bit more work into building out the animations to counteract it.

 

[Vuldacon]

Yes... they say we can have it but we have to correct it if we want to use it. and ONLY under specific circumstances.

I believe I can adjust the Radar Artillery by removing the Rotate Before Attack in EFZI2 Elite because it is Immobile.
I can just change the Attacks so all directions attack directly in each direction, then remove Rotate Before Attack and Ranged Attack.
... not that simple for others.

 

[Vuldacon]

I adjusted the Radar Artillery in EFZI2 Elite so it Attacks Any Unit correctly without Rotate Before Attack.
I adjusted all animations the same Except the Run Animation. This is not a problem as the Radar Artillery in EFZI2 Elite is set as Immobile but I believe all would work well with the Original Run Animation because the Unit would Run correctly from and to the adjusted Default positions.
Example:The Radar Artillery now faces East rather than Southeast for all Animations except the Run Animation so when the Attack Animation plays, it Fires in the Southeast direction correctly. If the Radar Artillery was sent to Run in the Southeast direction it would Run correctly but start and stop from the Adjusted Default position which is East. This works in the same way for all other adjusted directions.

Bluemofia... I believe removing "Rotate Before Attack" in the Biq from Units that need that setting to Attack correctly and then adjusting ALL Animations except the Run Animations so the Units Attack in the Correct directions would solve some issues.
This is very easily accomplished with the Storyboards.

Enlarge the Storyboards to at least 300 Zoom so you can see the Frame Lines clearly.
If needed, apply the Alpha Palette (Maintain Indexes) for the Units so you see the Shadows correctly (For example, some Units have all Shadows set as Red)
Duplicate the Storyboards.
You include the Frame Lines with Copy and Paste procedures to be accurate.
Using the Duplicate Storyboard and a Rectangle Tool, copy from the Top Left Corner Frame Line of the 2nd Row (South Direction) on the Storyboard all the way to the Bottom Right Corner Frame Line on the Storyboard (West Direction).
Paste this on the Original Storyboard starting from the Top Left Corner Frame Line (Southwest Direction) on the Storyboard to the next to last Direction on the Right Bottom Corner Frame Line on the Storyboard (Northwest Direction).
Again using the Duplicate Storyboard, Copy the Top Left Corner Frame Line (Southwest Direction) to the Bottom Right Corner Frame Line of the Southwest Direction.
Paste the Copied Southwest Direction on the Original Storyboard in the West Direction. This is the Bottom Row on the Storyboards.
If needed, apply the Original .pal Palette (Maintain Indexes) and save the Storyboards.
Generate the Flcs... Done.

 

[Bluemofia]

Small update this time, as I've been busy with real life work lately, so I spent more time on stuff that can be dropped/picked up fairly quickly, or on a work computer:

I've been tweaking and making some of the civpedia icons for buildings and updating stats a bit, and working primarily on costs to try and balance everything. This is rather difficult, so it's not as easy to make some sort of progress compared to simply making new graphics.

Here is a few of the civpedia icons for improvements (subject to change):

Gravitic Fusion Plant, VR Infrastructure, Starlifting Engine, Tourist Resort

To do:
* Worker Job times
* Design Civilizations
- Decide if Aliens will be a thing. (I keep putting this off... But I really should decide soon)
- Decide how to differentiate civs, whether as large differences (such as Playground Mod), or smaller differences (such as vanilla civ 3), or something in between.
* Government types
- Decide if governments will be unique to civs (ex: if Space France starts as a Republic, will they only have reformed versions of Republics such as Space Republics, Galaxy Republic, etc., or will they be allowed to change to Space Feudalism, Space Communism, etc.?)
- Stats
* Units
- Modify unit graphics to be more uniform
- Tweak stats as appropriate

 

[Vuldacon]

The Civilopedia Improvements look Very Good.
Yes, making the Graphics is faster to accomplish than the remaining Game factors along with text and links.

Perhaps just Aliens as "Barbarians" as an antagonist factor.

 

[Civinator]

Bluemofia, very good work!

I think with Kardashev III other civilizations in space are in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale