Primitive Players 2.0
Updated for 2.0 – AI no longer prefers Vogon poetry to FTL research!
It is the dawn of a new age for your species. You begin in 2100 with primitive buildings. Almost all starting techs must be researched. You get the vanilla weapons techs, basic armor, fission power, chemical thrusters, basic labs, and a theory about how FTL travel might someday work (as in the Pre-FTL Players mods).
Your people are a fractious and troublesome lot, much more prone to faction and rebellion. This hampers your technology and unity output, though these penalties can be overcome thru better technology. Those pops who settle offworld will be prone to rebel against your authority until you have the FTL technology to hold your empire together, either by charm or by force.
Your people are also not the only people on your homeworld. Independent nations hostile to your ethics are represented by tile blockers, with adjacency effects representing your normal relations and clearing them representing major diplomatic initiatives to assimilate or eliminate them. Please provide feedback on how the adjacency bonuses and penalties work and what they should be. Also be aware that losing a ground battle on your only world is an instant game over. So don’t start wars you aren’t ready for.
DLC restricted starts (Mechanists, Syncretics, Hives, Machines, Life-Seeded, Post-Apoc, and Barbarian) are currently bugged and only partially working while 2.02 is in beta. I don’t own the DLCs and so can’t test them, so once I have a stable target again I’ll try to code something and patch it via feedback.
An event on game start ( or by using the console command event primplay.1 ) allows you to give AI empires additional techs if you so choose, for a bit more challenge. The AIs also get the usual ships and mining stations even if they don’t have the tech yet. They need the help, and it’s easier to code this way.
Experimental FTL drives are a rare tech unlocked via fusion power, ion thrusters, and physics lab 1. Experimental drive tech is not required for true FTL unlocked by physics lab 2. Experimental drives give 1 physics point per month per ship that is moving (to you and all AIs that don’t have real FTL yet). They might also blow up and damage or destroy the ship. Extra hull tech or destroyers should prevent the destruction. Ships with these drives may get stuck at entry or exit points of hyperlanes. Stuck ships will usually get unstuck if given a stop order and a new destination. They might also jump back to zero on the vertical axis or simply cease to exist. AIs will not use this drive tech and autodesigner will not put it on your ships, so you may want the Designable Civilian Ships mod.
None. PreFTL players is not required and in fact will cause bugs if used along with this mod.
Recommended mods:
HIGHLY recommend using all three of Anex’s Enhanced AI, Glavius’ Ultimate AI, and Risa’s Unofficial Patch. You’ll probably want something that expands colonizability in order to settle your home system, especially now that STL is gone. I recommend my update to Echo’s Colonizeable Home Systems mod. HitMonkey has revived The Belt. Caligula Caesar’s two mods, Dynamic Political Events and Potent Rebellions Expanded will improve the mechanics of your factions and rebellious initial colonists, including them joining together against you. My Disputed Systems mod will let those rebels share a system with you. Toaster’s Starvation, Rationing, and Death may paradoxically be a life saver, as it guarantees that you will always be able to feed your population. Eventually. Once enough of them starve to death.
This is still an initial draft, there are some very interesting ethics related event chains in work to liven up the intial years.
Key tech tree info for 2.0:
– Planetary government -> Physics Lab 1 and Colonial Centralization -> Physics Lab 2 -> Practical hyperdrive.
– Space Construction -> Outposts -> Corvette Tech -> Starbase with shipyard to build corvettes, guaranteed available on the tech draw immediately after corvettes.
– Planetary government tech will allow you to attack enemy nations (UN sanctions anyone?) and convert neutral ones to client states.
– Planetary unification tech will allow you to assimilate client states and absorb their pop and tile.
– Lab techs reduce research penalties.
– Government and unity techs reduce penalties to ethics attraction and unity
– Fusion power, ion thrusters, and physics lab 1 -> interstellar drive.
– More tech tree revisions coming as I get new features working ( independent nations at start, shared systems, etc.)
Revised tech tree[bipedalshark.gitlab.io] for 1.8 version courtesy of Shark who walks like a man.
Armed primitive space station courtesy of MikeWe’s Enhanced Primitives.
The hostile nation tile blocker system is built around vanilla ethics. Mods that add ethics will probably not get starting pops of those ethics. The exception may be Petruxa’s Cultural Overhaul, since AckoliOfD00m has been kind/brave enough to create a mergemod.
Mods that change factions may not get factions as early or as often as intended.
Mods with predefined special systems (Various Sol mods, some mod races like silfae’s) should start as intended but no promises.
Drive components had to be overwritten to remove starting FTL.
The 3 basic tech files had to be overwritten to remove starting techs.
Overwritten vanilla files:
– 00_eng_tech, 00_phys_tech, and 00_soc_tech – conflict with mods that alter non-repeatable non-weapon techs.
– 00_utilities_drives – conflict with mods that alter vanilla drives
– event game_start. 5, 6, 9, 12, 13, 33 – changes to nomad timing, techs for advanced empires, starting ships, and starting pops / buildings
– All factions files: They will lobby for their preferred policies regardless of whether you’ve met aliens or not.
Discord channel[discordapp.com]
Revisions:
Old revisions of this mod are available below. Click the link to download.
