Recoding Nanite Factories

Shadow · July 3, 2002, 02:16

Howdy all.

I've noticed on my latest game (since installing Cradle 1.3) that Nanite Factories no longer have the ability to drastically reduce costs of various things. I can't figure out how to code this back in; can anyone help me out?

To take it a step further, is there any way to put this ability back in, but reign it in a little? It was a good thing, but it was definitely overkill.

Cheers,
Shadow

hexagonian · July 3, 2002, 09:22

If you are playing Cradle 1.3, Nanite Factories will not work, because CTP2 only allows 64 buildings, and Cradle added buildings that brought the total list to 70.

The buildings not used in Cradle are the following...

E Bank
Matter Decompiler
Micro Defense
Nanite Factory
Cornucopic Vat
Aqua Filter

all of which are late game buildings (Cradle was initially set up to run through the Industrial Age). When setting up Cradle, I kept the coding in the game for those buildings to allow for players to make adjustments to their setup, but I had kept the enable advances the same, so the buildings would still show up in the build lists. What happens is a player can still build these buildings, but there will not be any effect from them (bottom line, a player will waste production attempting to build them) The AI is scripted not to build these buildings.

This is spelled out in the readme file too.

Cradle 1.32 fixes this problem by giving all of those buildings a dummy enable advance (and it is very expensive - 20,000,000) that occurs at the end of the tech tree. A player should finish the game before getting to that advance.

However, a player can switch buildings around in the list. The way the list works is that the game will only recognize the first 64 buildings in the (CRA...)_buildings.txt files. (each one of the playing options for Cradle has its own buildings.txt file) So if you want to activate a building, you can cut and paste that building entry to the top of the list. However, you will then shift the list so that the former 64th building on the list (currently Ziggurat) will then drop into the 65th slot and will no longer be active.

And if you do this, you will also have to go into the various (CRA...)_BuildingBuildLists.txt files and add entries for the added building to enable the AI to build them, plus remove the building that you are deactivating.

All of the buildings can be adjusted regarding the benefits that they will give too - simply adjust the numbers, or cut and paste an existing benefit into the building you want to change.

Shadow · July 4, 2002, 01:12

Hey Hex, thanks for the directions.

Changed all (CRA...)_buildings.txt files (only 2 of them).
Something strange went on, when I went back into the old save game a bunch of buildings were all swapped around, a few cities had forcefields, etc... not a problem though.
Except that the nanite factories still didn't work. They stayed in the inventory of each city when I put them in, but there was no effect like there used to be.

Got me stumped.
Anyone have any ideas...

Shadow

Locutus · July 4, 2002, 06:42

In CtP1 Nanite factories gave you the very strong benefit of allowing you to rush-buy stuff cheaply, but in CtP2 this is no longer the case, Nanite Factories just give a 25% production bonus. Activision apparently agreed with you that the effect was too powerful and had to be toned down (yeah, I know, they were a little too thorough in this perhaps). I *think* you can still give back the old benefit by editing buildings.txt to add the property NoRushBuyPenalty to the Nanite Factory but I haven't tested that. As far as toning down the feature goes, I guess you could use SLIC to do that (remove more gold than happens by default or something) but I couldn't give you the code for that from the top of my head...

Shadow · July 4, 2002, 07:05

Hey Locutus,
I think you'll find that CTP2 was the same, in that the nanite factory made rushbuys very cheap.

[shrug]

I dunno, I've changed everything I can think of and it still won't go back to normal, even with NoRushBuyPenalty added in...

I'll keep tinkering.

arktiem · July 4, 2002, 07:32

Hey there, Shadow!

In CTP 1, Nanite Factories had the bonus of miking gold equal production for rush buying, but in CTP 2, they only give a +25% bonus to production (quite a bit lower than the power it had in CTP 1).

Arktiem

Locutus · July 4, 2002, 07:32

If that is so, the manual, tech chart, text files, strategy guide and my own memory must all be wrong/incomplete... (not entirely impossible, if the effect would be hardcoded, but not too likely either)

Anyway, you could check here to see if some other properties might work better but I doubt it...

Shadow · July 4, 2002, 08:20

Doh... missed a file.
Got it sorted now... cheers folks.

Loc - I think you were right bud... I've kinda lost track of what was and wasn't there. I've changed so much now it's a whole different game... hehehe

Locutus · July 4, 2002, 08:40

NP. I'm glad you got it working eventually...

Martin Gühmann · July 4, 2002, 12:44

The flag isn't hard encoded Locutus, it is in the release version of CTP2 and was removed with patch, just readd the flag and you have it back. Yes it is a very powerful feature, IIRC you was only able to build them in space cities in CTP1 that would have reduced the effect a lot. I don't build nanite factories, because I don't normal factories in order to controll pollution.

-Martin

Locutus · July 5, 2002, 04:53

Like I said, I didn't think it was very likely, but thanks for confirming it, and for clarifying the pre/post-patch thing, that would explain it...