Can you do this? (2 questions)

[LooseWasp]

1. Is it possible to set a faction's research to zero, and then assign whatever technology that faction would have? For example, I was thinking of a faction that could only use missiles (including fungal and techtonic payloads) from the very start, but couldn't terraform, or create infantry, rover, tank, naval, probe, or air units or breed alien lifeforms (with the possible exception of spore launchers). A free Perimiter Defense and Psi Gate in each base, increased resistance to psionic attack.

Ideally you'd want to have the faction gain the technologies for higher powered reactors (fusion, quantum, singularity) at appropriate times to keep them on a par with the others.

The idea being to create a faction that won't attack you, but can grow and could defend itself well if attacked. Hopefully it would grow to the point where another faction has to take it out order to win. I'm thinking this would be more of an AI faction than a player one; the only way I could see this faction winning is through economic victory, and since there's no tech growth a lot of the point of the game is taken out (for a human player, that is).

2. Is it possible to create a new landmark, or something like a monument? I was thinking it'd be cool if there were a few 'natural formations' that would increase the psych rating of any base claiming its resources by 1.

[Avenoct]

In the big picture, no, these things aren't possible, and there are a thousand great ideas like these for every one idea that will work.

However, in the Scenario Editor it's possible to create a scenario where no tech is discovered, and you could set a faction to have missiles as a starting tech, in fact, in a scenario you can assign whatever techs/facilities/whatever you want. Furthermore, you could give the faction -5 research and allow research. If you want to dissallow formers and the like you're either going to have to prevent that faction from researching appropriate techs, or remove those units from the units list in alpha.txt. It would also be a good idea to change the alpha.txt to dissallow tech-trading.

Sorry for the bad news, but nice idea!

-Smack

[gwillybj]

LooseWasp asked:
1. Is it possible to set a faction's research to zero, and then assign whatever technology that faction would have? For example, I was thinking of a faction that could only use missiles (including fungal and techtonic payloads) from the very start, but couldn't terraform, or create infantry, rover, tank, naval, probe, or air units or breed alien lifeforms (with the possible exception of spore launchers). A free Perimiter Defense and Psi Gate in each base, increased resistance to psionic attack.

I know this thread has been asleep a long time ... I was looking for something else when I read this, and couldn't stop thinking about it, so, (and maybe someone else will have fun with it, too).

TECH, Orbital, TECH, NewMiss, FACILITY, 4, FACILITY, 33, SOCIAL, PSI, ##, -----RESEARCH, TECHCOST, 999

TECH, Orbital and TECH, NewMiss give you all the missile chassis and payloads.
FACILITY, 4 is the Perimiter Defense and FACILITY, 33 is the Psi Gate.
Set PSI, ## to whatever value you had in mind.
-5 Research is the lowest you can preset. Go with Fundamentalist Politics for another -2 Research.
TECHCOST, 999 means 9.99*normal cost (can't preset higher). -5 Research doubles it to 19.98*normal, so they won't be making any breakthroughs on their own.
Avenoct is correct about having to edit alphax.txt to prevent construction of pre-set units, but that will prevent it for all factions.
Tech trading can't be prevented from within alphax.txt, but can it be disabled for a faction from within the Scenario Editor? I don't venture there, so I don't know.

[Googlie]

Originally posted by gwillybj
Tech trading can't be prevented from within alphax.txt, but can it be disabled for a faction from within the Scenario Editor? I don't venture there, so I don't know.

You can't actually restrict the no-tech trading to a specific faction, but the Scenario editor lets you create an environment where there is no tech trading whatsoever. There's a flag under "Scenatio Rules" that can be checked "No tech Trading"

G.