Unexpected behavior (bugs?)

[jaschacohen]

Saw a few things in my game that seemed...odd. Not necessarily bugs, but definitely unexpected.

1) I never researched Nuclear Weapon Delivery. What can I say, I may be a horrible warmonger, but nukes just ain't my bag. I did, however, capture a nuke facility in an enemy city and was subsequently able to use it myself.

2) Related to nukes - I declared war on a near by faction. The next round I get word that she's just build a number of nuke facilities. But even when I was rampaging through her homeland, not one of them was let off the chain. I was pretty sure there'd been enough turns so that they could be used. Is the AI disinclined to use nukes? (note: this *was* on easy-mode) Related: When she finally did drop one it registered in the log as 1+ pages of orbital bombardment, and then the nuke. She could have lead the attack with some OB, but the number of OBs listed seemed much higher than the number of cities she had left (this was toward the end of the war). It's certainly possible that I've miscounted something or misunderstood it, which is why I'm hesitant to even suggest this was a bug - perhaps it just needed to be clearer what was happening?

3) Healing and Universal Maint' Device - I build a "support truck" with one of these on it. The idea being to aid field repairs for a stack of damaged units. I couldn't see it doing a lick of good though. I was expecting it to cause friendlies in the stack to heal even on turns they did something (assuming the truck did nothing else). Was I misunderstanding this device?

[HitmanN]

I did, however, capture a nuke facility in an enemy city and was subsequently able to use it myself.

Let's say someone gives you a gun you've never seen before or know how to build one. Pointing the thing at the enemies and pulling the trigger still gets the job done. Nothing strange about it. :p You got yourself someone else's nuke. Just press the red button and watch the fireworks.

Is the AI disinclined to use nukes? (note: this *was* on easy-mode)

Maybe on easy mode, but definitely not on Medium. My first game ended the moment the AI's built a few nukes and declared war on me. It made my entire military (otherwise capable of holding ground against invasions) either vanish or useless in an instant. I still wish there was an option to turn these off so I could have nice games that focus on unit vs unit combat. At least then I'd know that if I lost a war, every single soldier and tank I built was used to defend against the enemy.

I actually had a nuke-free game recently, mostly due to the aggressive factions being weeded out before they could reach the tech, and then not having any further wars, but there was lots of war before that point, and it was the MOST FUN GAME I've played so far. No gimmicks and tricks. Just good ol' ground and sea forces clashing.

[SephiRok]

As a side note, you can easily mod any techs you don't like out of the game by saying 'hidden="1"' in the tech xml's 'technology' tag.

3) That is exactly how it should work.

[jdmillard]

That is cool. I'll have to remember later this when I'm trying to mix thinks up.

I'm guessing that modding out techs like that will only apply to new games right? If I mod out a tech, my saved games that are already underway shouldn't be affected... I'm guessing.

[HitmanN]

As a side note, you can easily mod any techs you don't like out of the game by saying 'hidden="1"' in the tech xml's 'technology' tag.

Cool. I think I'll try that in my next game.

[SephiRok]

It will also affect old games, which might cause tech gaps and unreachable techs since the tree is still the same but a tech disappears.

I also definitely suggest doing these mods in the user data folder as described in the readme and manual so you can easily get rid of them and they can't get changed (it does mean that if we change that xml as well you'll have the old one tho). We can add a flag or setting later on if those mods should be in effect or not.

There's obviously a lot more you can mod too, was just a quick pointer since he said he doesn't like ops.

[jdmillard]

So If I decided to mod out ATV's and then loaded a game in which I have ATV's, I would still have them... just without the ability to create more of them.

[SephiRok]

If you did exactly what I described you could still create them just the tech would be hidden so unresearchable unless you already have it. But you can also set ATVS' producable="0" then you won't be able to produce them.

[jdmillard]

Cool. Sometime after release, there's gonna have to be a Pandora Modding Forum.

[jaschacohen]

I did, however, capture a nuke facility in an enemy city and was subsequently able to use it myself.

Let's say someone gives you a gun you've never seen before or know how to build one. Pointing the thing at the enemies and pulling the trigger still gets the job done. Nothing strange about it. :p You got yourself someone else's nuke. Just press the red button and watch the fireworks.

well, a nuke is a *little* more complicated than a handgun.

More importantly, in many games not-having-the-tech == can't-use-the-tech. Wasn't sure what the paradigm here was expected to be.

[HitmanN]

I'm sure they made a manual for the nuke if it's got more than just a red button. RTFM!

In any case, I think it's pretty logical that when you capture something you don't have tech for yet, you expect to either be able to use it, or learn the tech from it, instead of it being just dead weight. And since learning the tech on capture would be a super easy way to acquire a ton of tech (a city can have many buildings you don't have tech for yet), it makes more sense that you just get to use the buildings instead. That's what I think anyways.

[dalves]

Besides, if they have just captured a city, some of its citizens certainly know how to operate those buildings, even if they don't know how to recreated them.

[fortydayweekend]

3) Healing and Universal Maint' Device - I build a "support truck" with one of these on it. The idea being to aid field repairs for a stack of damaged units. I couldn't see it doing a lick of good though. I was expecting it to cause friendlies in the stack to heal even on turns they did something (assuming the truck did nothing else). Was I misunderstanding this device?

I captured a Xenomorph Queen with one of these and it appeared to have the effect that units healed 20% when idle rather than 10%. And the Queen didn't have to be set to "heal". So the description was a bit misleading but it did have an effect.

[Rybor]

I can't find the xml file that you are referring to for hiding technologies. I found the technolgies.xml, but I don't see the tag that you mentioned. I tried the hidden there anyway, but it did not work. I looked through other xmls as well without much luck. Can you provide a little more detail as to where I can hide the technologies. I find the nukes and black holes kind of ruin the game for me.

Thanks!

[SephiRok]

Data/World/Technologies/Nuke.xml
Data/World/Technologies/BlackHole.xml