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code of 900 is a special case, of course, and is always available.
The other 900s are: 990 Microbiology, 991 Physics, 992 Psychosocial
Engineering, and 993 Applied Technologies. Note that with the exception of Applied Tech, these are *not* just headers. They're in the tech tree and must be researched like any other tech.
The 800 code basically "comments out" the tech from the game. These were apparently techs that were discarded during the design process.
The useless 800's are:
Plague Bomb Cure
Xaos
Power Cells
Materials
Ceramsteel Armor
Monopol Canisters
Fusion Cannons
Holistic says Vau Psychology should have been removed. They had intended to allow a Vau unit (like the Xyll Warbeast, which is a
Symbiot unit), but never got around to it.
You can change any of the values of the existing tech but be careful: remember that unit.dat and strbuild.dat might need to be adjusted.
Unfortunately can't add new tech but you can use the slots used by the "useless 800" techs, Vau Psychology, and the Applied Tech slot, which is just a header.
The archive text files can be modified as well. Tom has been modifying them by adding hard data so they provide bona fide online help rather than just flavor. These files can be found in the manowitz subdirectory. For instance, v1chp006.txt is volume 1 chapter
6. You can even change or edit the associated illustrations. These can be found in the pcx formatted files in the same subdirectory. The text files include a tag listing the appropriate illustration. To create your own chapter, you can add a line to the volume#.txt file were "#" is the volume you want to modify. To avoid changing all the following references in tech.dat, add new chapters to the end of the file. After you add the chapter title at the end, create the appropriate file name and add any text you want to show up, as well as an optional illustration tag. The easiest way to do this is to copy an existing chapter. Make sure the name of the file is correct.
Tom gives the following example:
"To add a chapter about "Excrement Launchers" to volume 5 you'd open the volume5.txt file and add the line 'Excrement Launchers' to the end of the file (actually you should add it between 'Plague Bomb' and
'Conclusion'). Save this and open v5chp001.txt (or any of the other vol 5 files). Change the first line to 'Excrement Launcher', change the text, modify or delete the illustration tag (the mind boggles at what that picture would look like!), and save it as v5chp048.txt
(Plague Bomb is v5chp47.txt). You're done!"
To add your own volume, just create a volume file like those already existing and the appropriate chapter files. Unfortunately it's uncertain how to get your new volume to show up on the pull-down menu from the main screen, but vol\chapter references in tech.dat work fine.
C. STRUCTURES
Strbuild.dat is the key file dealing with structures. It lists the name of a structure. If you number these sequentially, you'll get the structure's id#. water = a flag indicating if the structure can be built on water. land = a flag indicating if the structure can be built on land. road = a flag that indicates whether a structure includes a road (?). barren = a flag that indicates if a structure can be built on a barren world. neutral = a flag that perhaps indicates whether a particular structure retains it's neutral color even if occupied (e.g. a "fertile" space). build = a flag that indicates if a structure can be constructed.
Tom notes, "The build flag is kind of neat. If you set a non buildable flag to 1 it will show up on the build list (Arborium will get pushed down on top of the road button in the lower left corner).
This is kind of cool as you can build agoras, ruins, etc., unfortunately these are seeded during setup with goodies so you don't get anything." area = the area around a structure that is used for production. This can be changed, but remember that each one point increase increases the no-build radius by two. Existing overlaps when this value is changed seem to cause no problems. If you want to increase production though, Tom recommends increasing yields in the harvesting city's .dat file. Another intriguing possibility is adding an area to all the other cities. This negates the "megacity" strategy of surrounding your palace with layer after layer of cities. If you do this, be sure to increase the width of your shield accordingly (this is a variable in efs.ini).
Crd/Trn = number of credits the structure costs to operate. Using this you can assign cities a maintenance cost. Also if you put in negative numbers, a city will generate income. Oddly enough, while
Labs cost 500 to run, the value doesn't show up here. This is probably because the code that charges the 500 also turns the lab off if it isn't paid. This can't, however, be done from within this field: you just get the normal low cash warning. By the way, if you don't think labs should cost 500 just set this field to -500 for labs.
Credits = possibly a one time credit cost. It doesn't work, however.
Turns2Bld = possibly meant to be the number of turns to build a structure. This also doesn't work
Tech = prerequisite technology. Note that unlike units and techs, only one tech prerequisite is allowed. This is straightforward; just put in the tech code you want. Techs are arranged sequentially in tech.dat with "Nothing" counting as 0.
Value = probably used by the seeding algorithm that sets up the initial game. All the values are 100 except "unknown" which is the generic city icon you see for unspotted cities.
Tom notes, "I don't believe it's possible to add new structures because of several key things that aren't listed on this chart. In particular there's no link to the art (probably stored in the struct#.bin files in the bin directory), no way to set if a structure "pops" when entered, or whether a city produces, harvests, or does neither. This leads me to believe that the order of structures is fairly hardwired."
D. PRODUCTION
Prod.dat holds the core of the economics system. It is a set of records indicating by city what and how much of one resource generates another resource.
What you can change: the types and the amounts of both input and output resources and whether a particular resource is needed at all.
All these changes will show up correctly on the build screen and production reports.
What you can't change: you can't have more then one output and you can't add new records (e.g. making your palace produce monopols).
Farm.dat, arborium.dat, mine.dat and well.dat contain the production values by terrain type and tile set for harvest cities. Each type of terrain can produce up to 3 different resources. Farm.dat has instructions on how to change these values. You can change the amounts and types of existing production.
Tom's ubiquitous hacking disclaimer reads as follows: "ALWAYS back up your original .dat dir before making any changes. This info is from my own personal investigations and I am not affiliated with Holistic or
Segasoft or anybody else. TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!"
E. FIXING THE GUNSHIP BUG
As of version 1.1, there is no way to build Gunships. There was apparently some confusion when the game mastered: the unit chart says that Powered Csteel Armor (tech #54) should allow Gunships. But the unit.dat entry links to Gunship to Ceramsteel Armor (tech #38), which has been "remmed" out of the tech.dat file. Therefore, to reinstate
Gunships, simply change the "Req'd Tech" field in unit.dat from "38" to "54".
XI. BUGS
Below are a listing of bugs, some of which I haven't been able to personally corroborate(labeled "unconfirmed"), some of which Holistic claims are fixed in the next patch (v1.2), and some of which Holistic says they may address in a later patch (v1.3).
* An AI House won't declare himself Emperor after holding the Regency for the time required. Holistic's playful, but rather alarming reply to this was: "If you are losing that bad, why are you still playing anyway?"
* On some machines, an intolerable slowdown starts to kick in after
5020 or so. Holistic says it is addressed somewhat in v1.2, but they will continue to look into it in v1.3.
* Singularities and other resources can mysteriously start hyper-producing. This may be connected to certain House traits.
Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* Even though an Agora's resources have been depleted, you can still buy goods from the Merchant League from within the "build units" screen. Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* Sometimes units can be built without having the necessary resources and sometimes the resource cost isn't deducted from your stores.
Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* Removing technologies from the maintenance queue can cause odd problems, including negative research numbers. Holistic says they haven't seen this one. If anyone has a saved game with this, please forward it to them.
* Assigning techs from multiple labs that have completed research on the same turn can cause odd problems, such as some labs researching
"Nothing" instead of the assigned tech. Holistic says of this bug,
"There are some display glitches but nothing that affects game play to [our] knowledge."
* Naval units cannot be disbanded.
* No score is tallied at the end of the games (unconfirmed). This may be addressed in v1.3.
* AI houses, Rebels, and the Symbiots have been known to declare war on themselves. Holistic claims this has no effect on gameplay, but may be addressed in v1.3.
* Resources can be shuffled around without moving cargo pods by instructing a city to build something and then canceling it. No matter where on the planet the required resources were located, they will be deposited in cargo pods in the city that received the build orders. Holistic says they don't have a good idea how to fix this without disabling the cancel build feature.
* If you enter a Ruin with Ministry units and discover "lost" units, the Ministry units convert to House units (unconfirmed). Holistic says this is legit.
* Ministry engineers produce House cities. Holistic says this is legit.
* Spies in a stack allow the entire stack to attack on Byzantium II.
Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* The Regent can switch Ministry assignments mid-turn, taking advantage of all three Ministries in one turn if he so desires.
Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* The Church suffers from traffic jams by having 20 ships parked in orbit over Holy Terra. This prevents Inquisitors from being ferried to offending labs. Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* The computer players do not change their planets' Sect. Holistic says, "No fix planned as yet. We would like to add more features there, but haven't come up with anything that doesn't disrupt the game yet."
* Even after changing the Sect of a planet, newly produced units are always Orthodox. Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* There is no way to build Gunships. See HACKING: FIXING THE GUNSHIP
BUG. Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
The other 900s are: 990 Microbiology, 991 Physics, 992 Psychosocial
Engineering, and 993 Applied Technologies. Note that with the exception of Applied Tech, these are *not* just headers. They're in the tech tree and must be researched like any other tech.
The 800 code basically "comments out" the tech from the game. These were apparently techs that were discarded during the design process.
The useless 800's are:
Plague Bomb Cure
Xaos
Power Cells
Materials
Ceramsteel Armor
Monopol Canisters
Fusion Cannons
Holistic says Vau Psychology should have been removed. They had intended to allow a Vau unit (like the Xyll Warbeast, which is a
Symbiot unit), but never got around to it.
You can change any of the values of the existing tech but be careful: remember that unit.dat and strbuild.dat might need to be adjusted.
Unfortunately can't add new tech but you can use the slots used by the "useless 800" techs, Vau Psychology, and the Applied Tech slot, which is just a header.
The archive text files can be modified as well. Tom has been modifying them by adding hard data so they provide bona fide online help rather than just flavor. These files can be found in the manowitz subdirectory. For instance, v1chp006.txt is volume 1 chapter
6. You can even change or edit the associated illustrations. These can be found in the pcx formatted files in the same subdirectory. The text files include a tag listing the appropriate illustration. To create your own chapter, you can add a line to the volume#.txt file were "#" is the volume you want to modify. To avoid changing all the following references in tech.dat, add new chapters to the end of the file. After you add the chapter title at the end, create the appropriate file name and add any text you want to show up, as well as an optional illustration tag. The easiest way to do this is to copy an existing chapter. Make sure the name of the file is correct.
Tom gives the following example:
"To add a chapter about "Excrement Launchers" to volume 5 you'd open the volume5.txt file and add the line 'Excrement Launchers' to the end of the file (actually you should add it between 'Plague Bomb' and
'Conclusion'). Save this and open v5chp001.txt (or any of the other vol 5 files). Change the first line to 'Excrement Launcher', change the text, modify or delete the illustration tag (the mind boggles at what that picture would look like!), and save it as v5chp048.txt
(Plague Bomb is v5chp47.txt). You're done!"
To add your own volume, just create a volume file like those already existing and the appropriate chapter files. Unfortunately it's uncertain how to get your new volume to show up on the pull-down menu from the main screen, but vol\chapter references in tech.dat work fine.
C. STRUCTURES
Strbuild.dat is the key file dealing with structures. It lists the name of a structure. If you number these sequentially, you'll get the structure's id#. water = a flag indicating if the structure can be built on water. land = a flag indicating if the structure can be built on land. road = a flag that indicates whether a structure includes a road (?). barren = a flag that indicates if a structure can be built on a barren world. neutral = a flag that perhaps indicates whether a particular structure retains it's neutral color even if occupied (e.g. a "fertile" space). build = a flag that indicates if a structure can be constructed.
Tom notes, "The build flag is kind of neat. If you set a non buildable flag to 1 it will show up on the build list (Arborium will get pushed down on top of the road button in the lower left corner).
This is kind of cool as you can build agoras, ruins, etc., unfortunately these are seeded during setup with goodies so you don't get anything." area = the area around a structure that is used for production. This can be changed, but remember that each one point increase increases the no-build radius by two. Existing overlaps when this value is changed seem to cause no problems. If you want to increase production though, Tom recommends increasing yields in the harvesting city's .dat file. Another intriguing possibility is adding an area to all the other cities. This negates the "megacity" strategy of surrounding your palace with layer after layer of cities. If you do this, be sure to increase the width of your shield accordingly (this is a variable in efs.ini).
Crd/Trn = number of credits the structure costs to operate. Using this you can assign cities a maintenance cost. Also if you put in negative numbers, a city will generate income. Oddly enough, while
Labs cost 500 to run, the value doesn't show up here. This is probably because the code that charges the 500 also turns the lab off if it isn't paid. This can't, however, be done from within this field: you just get the normal low cash warning. By the way, if you don't think labs should cost 500 just set this field to -500 for labs.
Credits = possibly a one time credit cost. It doesn't work, however.
Turns2Bld = possibly meant to be the number of turns to build a structure. This also doesn't work
Tech = prerequisite technology. Note that unlike units and techs, only one tech prerequisite is allowed. This is straightforward; just put in the tech code you want. Techs are arranged sequentially in tech.dat with "Nothing" counting as 0.
Value = probably used by the seeding algorithm that sets up the initial game. All the values are 100 except "unknown" which is the generic city icon you see for unspotted cities.
Tom notes, "I don't believe it's possible to add new structures because of several key things that aren't listed on this chart. In particular there's no link to the art (probably stored in the struct#.bin files in the bin directory), no way to set if a structure "pops" when entered, or whether a city produces, harvests, or does neither. This leads me to believe that the order of structures is fairly hardwired."
D. PRODUCTION
Prod.dat holds the core of the economics system. It is a set of records indicating by city what and how much of one resource generates another resource.
What you can change: the types and the amounts of both input and output resources and whether a particular resource is needed at all.
All these changes will show up correctly on the build screen and production reports.
What you can't change: you can't have more then one output and you can't add new records (e.g. making your palace produce monopols).
Farm.dat, arborium.dat, mine.dat and well.dat contain the production values by terrain type and tile set for harvest cities. Each type of terrain can produce up to 3 different resources. Farm.dat has instructions on how to change these values. You can change the amounts and types of existing production.
Tom's ubiquitous hacking disclaimer reads as follows: "ALWAYS back up your original .dat dir before making any changes. This info is from my own personal investigations and I am not affiliated with Holistic or
Segasoft or anybody else. TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!"
E. FIXING THE GUNSHIP BUG
As of version 1.1, there is no way to build Gunships. There was apparently some confusion when the game mastered: the unit chart says that Powered Csteel Armor (tech #54) should allow Gunships. But the unit.dat entry links to Gunship to Ceramsteel Armor (tech #38), which has been "remmed" out of the tech.dat file. Therefore, to reinstate
Gunships, simply change the "Req'd Tech" field in unit.dat from "38" to "54".
XI. BUGS
Below are a listing of bugs, some of which I haven't been able to personally corroborate(labeled "unconfirmed"), some of which Holistic claims are fixed in the next patch (v1.2), and some of which Holistic says they may address in a later patch (v1.3).
* An AI House won't declare himself Emperor after holding the Regency for the time required. Holistic's playful, but rather alarming reply to this was: "If you are losing that bad, why are you still playing anyway?"
* On some machines, an intolerable slowdown starts to kick in after
5020 or so. Holistic says it is addressed somewhat in v1.2, but they will continue to look into it in v1.3.
* Singularities and other resources can mysteriously start hyper-producing. This may be connected to certain House traits.
Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* Even though an Agora's resources have been depleted, you can still buy goods from the Merchant League from within the "build units" screen. Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* Sometimes units can be built without having the necessary resources and sometimes the resource cost isn't deducted from your stores.
Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* Removing technologies from the maintenance queue can cause odd problems, including negative research numbers. Holistic says they haven't seen this one. If anyone has a saved game with this, please forward it to them.
* Assigning techs from multiple labs that have completed research on the same turn can cause odd problems, such as some labs researching
"Nothing" instead of the assigned tech. Holistic says of this bug,
"There are some display glitches but nothing that affects game play to [our] knowledge."
* Naval units cannot be disbanded.
* No score is tallied at the end of the games (unconfirmed). This may be addressed in v1.3.
* AI houses, Rebels, and the Symbiots have been known to declare war on themselves. Holistic claims this has no effect on gameplay, but may be addressed in v1.3.
* Resources can be shuffled around without moving cargo pods by instructing a city to build something and then canceling it. No matter where on the planet the required resources were located, they will be deposited in cargo pods in the city that received the build orders. Holistic says they don't have a good idea how to fix this without disabling the cancel build feature.
* If you enter a Ruin with Ministry units and discover "lost" units, the Ministry units convert to House units (unconfirmed). Holistic says this is legit.
* Ministry engineers produce House cities. Holistic says this is legit.
* Spies in a stack allow the entire stack to attack on Byzantium II.
Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* The Regent can switch Ministry assignments mid-turn, taking advantage of all three Ministries in one turn if he so desires.
Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* The Church suffers from traffic jams by having 20 ships parked in orbit over Holy Terra. This prevents Inquisitors from being ferried to offending labs. Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* The computer players do not change their planets' Sect. Holistic says, "No fix planned as yet. We would like to add more features there, but haven't come up with anything that doesn't disrupt the game yet."
* Even after changing the Sect of a planet, newly produced units are always Orthodox. Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
* There is no way to build Gunships. See HACKING: FIXING THE GUNSHIP
BUG. Holistic claims it will be fixed in v1.2.
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- Emperor of the Fading Suns FAQ by System on 09/03/2006, 09:50