Reverse Tech Requirement

posted on January 8th, 2015, 4:21 pm

I've been away for a little while, but it's definitely time for me to start working on Tryptic's Mod again

Is there a way to create a reverse tech requirement: a special ability that goes away once a certain technology is researched? If the whole ability can't be removed, it would be okay if only the button was hidden once the tech is complete.

posted on January 9th, 2015, 5:40 am

Alright, I have another direction to approach the problem. It involves having a research pod that destroys another research pod when it is built. In order to do this, the second research pod needs to target the first pod with an extraweapon that will replace itself into nothing.

The problem is, how to target it? If there is an ally of the same race, then I'm worried that building the pod will destroy their first pod as well, without adding the second pod. Is there a command to have a weapon fire only on targets owned by the same player?

posted on January 11th, 2015, 10:59 pm

Yes, you can do this: check Dominion prototypes for an in-game example

Yes, there are also commands in cannonimp to allow targeting units of only the player. Also, range command.

posted on January 13th, 2015, 2:17 am

okay, I may have to go with the tech pod that destroys another tech pod.

Here is the full problem: I'm attempting to create Borg special weapons that can be used on some ships without the technology, then more ships can use it once it is researched. The problem is that they share a button slot, with the researchable version having "showonlyifhastech = 1"

When two ships are selected at once, one having the ability and one not, it seems to be totally random whether the button appears or not. So my next approach has been to give some ships a separate version of the ability that uses a different button slot, then have that ability go away once the tech is produced.

Method #1 would be the reverse tech requirement, which I'm looking at now. I don't see any way to apply the reverse tech requirement to special weapons, but if there is one that would be awesome.

Method #2 seems to be a better option. I can have the Borg starbase spawn a tech pod at the beginning of the game, then have the researched pod fire an infinite range weapon that either destroys it, or causes it to replace itself into nothing. Hopefully the combination of validtargets, hitmode = 6", and possibly "hitinvalid = 1" will work; I'll create a prototype and see how it goes.