Just some experiences

from GalCiv3 Forums

So I've played few custom maps and here's some thoughts.

Ship operational range. I played a large map and all my ships could reach almost to the edge of it without any life support systems. So I could just fly around enemy systems freely and the enemy could do the same. I wonder if there was some way to mod this so that ships without life support modules could only operate inside your own zone. And colony modules would increase the operational range to make colonizing distant worlds possible, but they would take much more ship space.

Then, I had rly big issues with losing the focus about my survey ships all the time. There is this big list of fleets which all have similar names, the map is symmetrical and the ships all look the same. So I constantly kep looking where my survey ships were. I couldn't rename them, because i kept them in fleets and the fleet name changed every time a new ship was invited. And because the fleet might sometimes perform its last moves on its own and ships were colored like my influence zone on the minimap, it was pretty difficult indeed to keep a constant focus on specific fleets.

Commonwealths are a bit silly. When you take a planet, you might make it into a commonwealth. Beginner commonwealths have 3000 money and they will give it to you straight away, for free. After that they have normal trading prices, which are often very unreasonable. For example my commonwealth offered me 100 money for a colony. But when I wanted to buy one colony ship from them, it costed I think something like 9000 money. Anyway, this means that it's pretty easy money to take a colony from enemy, make it instantly a commonwealth, rob their money and leave it like that. It's just after taking 6 planets, you have 6 commonwealths that are just annoying and you hope they are destroyed.

Otherwise, it's pretty immersive game. Any tips how to mod that ship range issue?

 

 

27,467 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Spacepudding, 

 

What size map and rarity of planets do you play on? I have spent a looong time playing Gal civ (1550 hours), its my favorite 4x game. 

I have a game I am playing on that has been ongoing since March. Its turn 350 or so but i play 2 or 3 turns.. and come back a day or so later. 

I only play on extra large insane maps with rare habitability of all planets and either spiral or 'even distribution' . I still end up with way too many planets. 

There are a few ways to address your range issue. 

One way is to chain star-bases to the destination you need to go to. This is expensive and will cost Administrators. 

Or

You can just keep adding life support modules but my assumption here is you simply want support modules to let you go farther. 

In that case I would simply modify the modules to a value you want. .... For example I will start a custom race and and Ill modify beam weapons to not require a resource at tier one (all the other weapons are resource free yet 'lasers' require Elerium.). 

How did you want to address the problem and I can help you in the files. 

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Larsenex, reply 1

How did you want to address the problem and I can help you in the files.
End of Larsenex's quote

Well, if you could tell me which file and line contains the value which determines how far from planets and starbases a ship without life support module can travel. I think it should be significantly less. At the moment you don't need life support at all 90% of time in most ships, only very long distance survey ships needs them.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

He's playing on a large map, which is not very big. He wants to know how to shorten the range. Even eliminating it where if you have no support modules you can't leave the influence range. I have over 2500 hours.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

ShipHullStatDefs.xml controlls what ships start with. This however is not the issue, they keep shrinking map sizes (since the launch of Crusade) but, Life support and inital starting ranges have never been adjusted to compensate smaller and smaller maps.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Alright, I modded my game so that all ship hulls except cargo has 1 range. It works perfectly, at least for me. If I want to make offensive fleet, I have to invest on ship range upgrade sciences. Previously those upgrades were pretty much useless but now they are actually necessary, if you want to travel around more freely.

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting SpacePuddings, reply 5

Alright, I modded my game so that all ship hulls except cargo has 1 range. It works perfectly, at least for me. If I want to make offensive fleet, I have to invest on ship range upgrade sciences. Previously those upgrades were pretty much useless but now they are actually necessary, if you want to travel around more freely.
End of SpacePuddings's quote

 

Life support required for all spaceships? What kind of crazy talk is that? :)

Um, did you edit in place or make a mod for these changes? If you have a mod, can you point us at it? I like this idea a lot.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting dlapine1, reply 6
Life support required for all spaceships? What kind of crazy talk is that? :)

Um, did you edit in place or make a mod for these changes? If you have a mod, can you point us at it? I like this idea a lot.
End of dlapine1's quote

 

Huh, I didn't make a mod. I just edited this part as such for each hull type except cargo: As previously mentioned, these values can be found from ShipHullStatDefs.xml

 

 <EffectType>ShipRange</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Ship</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>1</Value>

 

I don't get it why you guys say a mod must be made. I just edit these values straight in the normal files. It just requires to verify the integrity of data cache, closing steam, making the edit and restarting steam before it works.

 

Anyway, you don't have to buy life support for each ship. There are many ways to increase ship range, such as engineering tech tree which gives global range bonuses. Also, you can use those range increasing support components, that will increase the range of all ships in the fleet. That component was previously pretty much useless. I think dramatically reducing ship range like this makes the game more interesting. Especially in larger maps.

 
Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

When they update all your changes may disappear.

If it was a mod then you would not care about what the update changes.

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