Messages

Is there a particular reason this isn't on Steam Workshop? Its just that, I refuse to use any mod that isn't on the workshop because I don't want to be stuck checking the forums every few days or week to see if there's an update. The workshop saves the time by allowing automatic updates and all especially with me having over 100 mods. This does look like a great mod after all that I'd love to have but yea, I can't find it on the workshop.

Not sure where "Combat Extended" comes in at, but ok.

What I am expecting to see, is that my medical supply ship is modified to have the herbal boosters added to its stock.
What is happening, is nothing, those items are not added to the stock. I'll switch them to "always" just to check, but I doubt it'll do anything.

I shared the XML file my patch intends to patch, and the patch contents here so that you can see what I am trying to modify with my patch.

This is the mod I am trying to detect items from, and add them to my trade ship if the exist:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=962926505

If any of them are considered a failure however, thats a bad thing and means there is something wrong.

Edit;
Also, I know how to pen the debug log. There are no patch operation errors. There's no patch information here at all. Only comment lines talking about other mods patch jobs succeeding.

I'm not sure whats going wrong, there seems to be no way to activate patch related errors or logs of how the patch went through. Ive tried for two days now to try different things and nothing has worked so I give up and here I am. Personally I hate forums for communication, but I am not in any of the discords..

This is the item I am trying to add items to;

Code Select Expand

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Defs>

<TraderKindDef>
<defName>Orbital_MedicalGoods</defName>
<label>medical supplier</label>
<commonality>1</commonality>
<orbital>true</orbital>
<stockGenerators>
<li Class="StockGenerator_SingleDef">
<thingDef>Silver</thingDef>
<countRange>
<min>2000</min>
<max>4000</max>
</countRange>
</li>
<li Class="StockGenerator_SingleDef">
<thingDef>Cloth</thingDef>
<countRange>
<min>50</min>
<max>200</max>
</countRange>
</li>
<li Class="StockGenerator_SingleDef">
<thingDef>MedicineIndustrial</thingDef>
<countRange>
<min>100</min>
<max>250</max>
</countRange>
</li>
<li Class="StockGenerator_SingleDef">
<thingDef>MedicineUltratech</thingDef>
<countRange>
<min>25</min>
<max>75</max>
</countRange>
</li>
<li Class="StockGenerator_SingleDef">
<thingDef>Neutroamine</thingDef>
<countRange>
<min>250</min>
<max>750</max>
</countRange>
</li>
<li Class="StockGenerator_SingleDef">
<thingDef>Luciferium</thingDef>
<countRange>
<min>50</min>
<max>200</max>
</countRange>
</li>
<li Class="StockGenerator_SingleDef">
<thingDef>Penoxycyline</thingDef>
<countRange>
<min>100</min>
<max>300</max>
</countRange>
</li>
</stockGenerators>
</TraderKindDef>

</Defs>


This is the patch file;

Code Select Expand

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Patch>

<Operation Class="PatchOperationSequence">
<success>Normal</success>
<operations>
<li Class="PatchOperationTest">
<xpath>/Defs/ThingDef[defName = "AntiparasiticalBooster"]</xpath> <!-- Test if this item exists -->
<success>Normal</success>
</li>
<li Class="PatchOperationAdd"> <!-- If the item above exists, add the below values to my trader's stock -->
<xpath>/Defs/TraderKindDef[defName = "Orbital_MedicalGoods"]/stockGenerators</xpath>
<value>
<li Class="StockGenerator_SingleDef">
<thingDef>AntiparasiticalBooster</thingDef>
<countRange>
<min>30</min>
<max>80</max>
</countRange>
</li>
</value>
</li>
</operations>
</Operation>

<Operation Class="PatchOperationSequence">
<success>Normal</success>
<operations>
<li Class="PatchOperationTest">
<xpath>/Defs/ThingDef[defName = "HerbalImmunityBooster"]</xpath> <!-- Test if this item exists -->
<success>Normal</success>
</li>
<li Class="PatchOperationAdd"> <!-- If the item above exists, add the below values to my trader's stock -->
<xpath>/Defs/TraderKindDef[defName = "Orbital_MedicalGoods"]/stockGenerators</xpath>
<value>
<li Class="StockGenerator_SingleDef">
<thingDef>HerbalImmunityBooster</thingDef>
<countRange>
<min>45</min>
<max>90</max>
</countRange>
</li>
</value>
</li>
</operations>
</Operation>

<Operation Class="PatchOperationSequence">
<success>Normal</success>
<operations>
<li Class="PatchOperationTest">
<xpath>/Defs/ThingDef[defName = "ConcentratedImmunityBooster"]</xpath> <!-- Test if this item exists -->
<success>Normal</success>
</li>
<li Class="PatchOperationAdd"> <!-- If the item above exists, add the below values to my trader's stock -->
<xpath>/Defs/TraderKindDef[defName = "Orbital_MedicalGoods"]/stockGenerators</xpath>
<value>
<li Class="StockGenerator_SingleDef">
<thingDef>ConcentratedImmunityBooster</thingDef>
<countRange>
<min>20</min>
<max>60</max>
</countRange>
</li>
</value>
</li>
</operations>
</Operation>

</Patch>

Essentially, I am trying to make it add those items to the shop list only if that person's mod is detected. The patch system is confusing to me, I'd rather use C# but I don't know how to code.

Any intention of putting this on steam? I don't like manually installing mods so I only use steam workshop where available.

Personally I dislike Paradox, they ruined one of my childhood games, Majesty Gold. Made it more joke than anything. But eh. I doubt Tynan would sell his flagship game unless he was looking to join a company instead of staying independent.

The problems with being independent is funding, it requires you to do Early Access and hope that people will support your game where now days everyone's a whiny little kid and if you don't do what they say they bash your game into the ground. Don't release within a year, and they attack it for being in Access too long. Even worse now days is the age of ~Diversity~~~~ Gotta have total ~~equality~~~~ if you want your game to survive the Social Justice Mobs. So if you stay an Indie developer, you risk going bankrupt.

The disadvantage with joining a company though, is you're no longer free to create as you see fit. The people in charge of you will tell you what you can or can't do, how fast you have to do it, and even if you don't manage to complete it by then you release what you got whether its buggy and unplayable and everyone attacks you for being a bad developer and the company can throw you under the bus if they have to. But at least you get a stable income while you work on the project, guaranteed income.

So in either situation, you have to decide if you want risk of starving, or if you want limits but are guaranteed to have food on your table.

I'm not an expert per say, I've just talked to a few devs over the last 8 years and have different perspectives and know some of the limits behind what goes on in making a game. Tynan can feel free to correct me if he wants (assuming my evaluation is wrong).

I appended your idea to the list.

I'd like to default my colonists to a drug policy so I don't have to delete all and set one single one to each colonist individually.

I'd also like to be able to save my drug policy outside of the save file so I can have it in -all- saves and not have to set it anymore.  Starting a new game is the most annoying part of the game now because I have to adjust literally everything.  Would be nice to just be able to save a drug policy to game and somewhere in options have that as the default upon starting a new colony.

We should have a visual indicator somewhere for night owls on the restrict screen so we can better set them up instead of clicking each and every single pawn till you find the night owl then go through the list to set them.

[----- ----- ----- ----- ----- Edit Existing ----- ----- ----- ----- -----]

I like using the scenario editor to create certain circumstances and stories, but the editor seems to be a little weak at the moment, with a few issues as well.  I'll type up a list of things I think should be edited, then added, then fixed.  I'm not very good with formatting, especially on SMF. 

I've somewhat colorized these based on how difficult I think it would be for the devs to implement them.  Green to Red on difficulty scale.  I can't say myself for sure how hard it is, its only how hard I myself think it would be, my educated guess that is.


----- ----- ----- ----- ----- Edit Existing ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Arrival Method
This currently has two options. Standing, and Drop Pods.
I'd like to see "map edge (direction)", and "Caravan mode (direction)".
Map edge has your chosen start conditions but with you standing on that map edge.  All your start near supplies, near the map edge where you started.
Caravan mode, has your colonists packed with as much of those materials as possible, including animals that can carry weight.  They are set to automatically go towards the center, to unpack.  The player can pause and place a caravan spot to have his caravan unpack there.
Perhaps, a temporary 1 game day bonus can be applied to the carry weight of pawns and animals to support any weight so they can carry -all- to the unpacking location.

Naked
Replace this with "Clothing", and add options for clothing: "Naked","Standard","Synthread","Hyperweave","Random".
Standard, would be a set of basic cloth clothing.  Synthread would be what you start with normally.  Random, would be the game generator picking randomized clothing like it does for raiders and visitors.

Starting People
Add an option here, a checkbox next to "chosen from", that enables these pawns to arrive in various ways later in the game.  So the people you left behind, will make it to the planet over the next year of game time and you'll see them either in a raid, a friendly visitor group, or fallen from the sky in a rescue pod.
"It seems that one of the people you left behind, has joined an enemy faction and is in the raid attacking you.  If you capture him, he may be willing to join you.  Killing him may make your colonists unhappy." (the message appended to a raid, like those with a family member in it)
"A group of visitors has arrived, and one of them is someone you left behind.  If you send your warden out to talk to them, they may be convinced to join without hurting relations with the faction." (The message appended to a visiting/trade faction message)

This could allow for some interesting features as well, like having a random message pop up that says "Someone you knew from back on the ship has convinced a faction that you are good people, relations with them have been temporarily set to neutral, and will stay for a period of time.  They wish to meet with you (a peace talk quest), if you do not visit them in the given time, relations will be worse than before."

Game Start Dialog
Move this entry to the top, above "Allowed Age Range", and add a checkbox to it that removes the input box and says "Use Description".

Description +Tags
Disable "Enter" from sending you to the next menu, allow Enter key to be used to insert new lines into the description.  Increase character limit from 1000 to something much greater, possibly even 10,000 and show the character limit and current characters. 

Tags;
Add special tags here to let you specify conditions instead of auto generating the rule set at the end.  Add a tag limit as well, like 20 tags. Tags contain % on both sides, aka %tag%.
Tags: "PlayerFaction", "StartPawns", "ChoicePawns", "ArrivalMethod", "AgeRange", "CannotDo", "PawnExplode", "ForcedIncidents", "DisabledIncidets", "DisabledBuildings", "DisabledResearch", "HealthConditions", "ForcedTraits", "PawnClothings", "PermanentConditions", "PlanetKill", "NeedLevels", "StartWith", "StartNear", "RandScatter", "StartAnimals", "StartResearch", "StatMultipliers"

Some tags may need some advanced editing and such.  Like say you type "You land on a planet, survey scans indicate that %ForcedIncidents.1% will occur every so often and because of generic reason here, %ForcedIncidents.3% will happen often."
I'm not sure.  The tags was really an after thought, you could simply add an option to hide data from the auto generated description instead so the player won't know what options the scenario has unless he goes in to edit it.

PlanetKiller
Lets spice this up a little and let us choose a planet killing event.
"Weapon" = Current.

"LargeMeteorite" = A planet wiping meteorite impacts somewhere.  Giving you 2 game days left to escape before the devistation hits you.  All light roofing collapses instantly, 30% heavy rock roof collapses destroying whatever is under it like it normally would.  Then, over the course of 12 game hours, the sky darkens, ash rains down on the colony everywhere, toxic ash buildup starts happening.  Light level after 12 hours is now 40% tops.  After 36 hours, the planet begins to crack, your map will generate a river of red boiling lava that wipes out anything under it.  Impassable tiles.  48 hours, the game ends with details saying that the planet exploded under extreme pressure.

"SmallMeteorite" = A meteorite smashes into the planet, and starts a permanent volcanic winter event.  This is a very soft planet killer.  1 game month in, the light level is now 40% tops.  Plants can no longer grow outdoors exposed to the sky.  Any rooms not fully sealed will be toxic to colonists and ash toxicity starts building up much in the way of radioactive fallout but it will happen in -any- room not 100% roofed. The temperature will start to drop, factions on the map will start being deleted, random bases wiped.  Raids will happen more often, allies will request help more often until they are wiped.  Insects and Mechanoids will happen far more often, having been disturbed from their hybernation.  3 game months in, toxicity will affect anything under a roof, it is no longer safe on the planet, not even inside a base.  You must flee before your colonists die from the toxicity. 1 game year in, game ends, explaining that all remaining colonists have succumb to radiation, ash toxicity, and other various effects of a dying planet, regardless of their enhancements.

(Might think of more later)


----- ----- ----- ----- ----- Add New ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Disallow Research
Simple, add an option to disable research and anything that requires it.

StoryTeller
Add a story teller selection here with a box to check that says "Skip Storyteller Screen".
The first box lets you select who tells the story.  The next box contains no button until the first one is chosen, and then you select the options -that- story teller has.  Skipping, would mean the player can't change this.

WorldSeed
This option contains multiple settings.
Seed, Globe Coverage, Rainfall, Temperature.  It also includes a checkbox to skip the world generator screen.
Globe Coverage, will default to 30% every time, no randomization here.  On the scenario's tab, an icon of the planet should appear with a colored status to display if someone forced a scenario to generate with a 100% generated world as a special warning.  Green planet icon for 5%, lime green for 30% default. Yellow for 50%, red for 100%.

Rainfall and Temp settings are simple sliders like in the actual world gen screen. A -3 to 3 slider that defaults at 0.
Seed, lets you type in a specific seed to have the world generate.  Enter the word "random" to leave it randomly generated.  This would let you either specify a specific seed to use, or set random seed while locking rainfall and temp at a specific level.

StartLocationMap
Lets say, you want to force a completely specified scenario.  This will let you specify where the user begins either a fuzzy select or a direct select.

Fuzzy Select: Scenario author is presented with some buttons below "selection type".  Mountain,Rainfall,Temperature,Growing Period,Faction Distance,Biome

Mountain: You are asked what mountain status the player will start at. Flat, Small Hills, Large Hills, Mountainous
The game will first scan all tiles with this chosen status to generate a list.

Growing Period: Select a growing period type.  Never, 10/60, 20/60, 30/60, 40/60, 50/60, Always.
This will choose from the Mountain list.  If no options are found, it goes to the next nearest value.

Faction Distance: Allows you to specify how close to a faction base you're allowed to be. Directly Next, within 2 cells, within 3 cells, within 4 cells, Further than 5 cells.
This will check all the tiles from the growing period list to see if any fall within the rule set you choose above.  If you select within 4 cells for example, all tiles outside of 4 cells range of a faction base will be deleted from the list.

Biome: List the available biomes in game here to choose from.  If biome is not found, this option will be ignored.

Rainfall: You are asked for a general area of rainfall status. Least, Low, Medium, High, Highest.
The game will choose 25% of the biome list based on the option you pick here, to keep.  This will keep the nearest 10 options of the list as a potential choice.

Temperature:  Same as rainfall.  Will check rainfall's list and pick an option from it.  This is the end of the checks so this option ultimately picks the final start point.  It will take 3 of the options in the last list, and choose one of them, unless you specified least, or highest, then it will pick the lowest or highest.

Direct Select: Scenario author is presented with a single button.  "Pick a spot on a map"
This takes you to a world generator screen, where you'd choose your planet options like globe coverage, seed, rainfall and temp.  Then you pick a spot, and click "choose".  This will trigger the scenario screen to add "WorldSeed" above this to the list with the chosen world gen options, and then this option will show the tile ID in the input box.  Greyed out so you can't manually type a new one in.  A button next to the box that says "pick" to let you pick again from the same world seed.  Changing "worldseed" resets this option.

MapFactions
This option will let you specify 3 things.
How many factions are there.
How many of these factions are tribes.
How many of these factions are pirate. (always enemy)

SpecificFaction
This option ignores the above, and adds a new faction to the game.  Scenario creator can choose the faction's name, ally enemy status, how many bases the faction will generate.

CropModification
A way to change a crop growth speed, output amount, or disable the crop entirely.  This will let you select a crop, like Rice.  Checkbox to disable it, default unchecked.  2 options below that, growth speed multiplier, and crop output multiplier.  Either an input box or a slider.  Input box would allow advanced control of course.

Victory Conditions
Add a method to set victory conditions.  Such as "Acquire x wealth, survive x days, reach a population of x", or other such.

CaravansAllowed
Enable or disable caravans, or control how many are allowed on the map at once.  Disabling splitting if you're at that number.  Basically, type 0 to disable forming caravans, and 999 to disable max caravans.  -- Proposed by Viperwasp


----- ----- ----- ----- ----- Fixes ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

FloatMenu
Replace the float menu with a search feature that shows the top 10 items in the search results as you type.  If you type nothing, show a "float menu" button to pull up "all" in the float menu.  But if you type something, show the top 10 matches, and let the user click one of those 10.

Or perhaps, an input box on float menus that have more than 10 items in them.  At the top of the menu an input box that when you open the menu it is auto selected so you can begin typing without clicking anything.  Say I search for "Medi", it would delete all menu options that don't have "medi" in the name. (case insensitive)

If you do this second thing, please return the float menu to the bigger text size of the normal smaller menus.  Items menu for example that has over 100 results in it is rather tiny, I had to get within 6 inches of my screen to read it.  I spent half an hour trying to find Herbal Medicine in the menu cause I was looking in the wrong spots and for some reason thought it was a different name and I just simply missed it a few times with so very many results.  Its very hard to make a good scenario this way. xD

Create Disabled Events
You can't disable an event, then manually create the event with scenarios.  This prevents a timed event setup that allows you to disable things like early game ship escape or other early game things.

E.G. I disabled the ship escape event, and then created it after exactly 120 days.

Easy Fix: Allow disabled events to manually be triggered.

Duplicate Events
There's also an issue of creating multiple of the same event.  I can't set an event to happen after 2 days, then 4 days, then 7 days, 12 days.  I can only have the event repeat every x days when I check the box.

Perhaps what you can do for this is mark certain events as no duplicate, so they won't allow you to post duplicates of that event.
Easy Fix: Allow certain events to be in the list multiple times.

Or you can enable an input box so you can input comma denominated lists. "2.5632,4.8234,7.8823,12.9112,19.2612" and even a "loop" to allow it to loop that specific list. "2.5632,4.8234,7.8823,12.9112,19.2612,loop" - where loop is, the game starts that list over again.  Others could be "stop", to stop this incident completely. "random5", to pick random from the list prior to this one that many times before going to next item. "loop#", to loop a number of times.  A final example;

"2.5632,4.8234,7.8823,12.9112,19.2612,random3,loop2,stop"
[[2, 4, 7, 12, 19, random, random, random], [2, 4, 7, 12, 19, random, random, random], [2, 4, 7, 12, 19, random, random, random], stop]

I didn't realize, because I had stayed inside the map while I was mining, and I thought the caravan was already made so I had to just walk to the green edges of the map to leave.  Didn't know I could just re-form it from the world map when I was done.

I didn't see a suggestion for this in a quick search, I did see some others that I commented on though.

I was playing with a mod that spawns an area of rich resources, and I sent along 35 muffalo to carry hay and other supplies with me to go mine the area of the map.  However I couldn't find a way to quickly load my caravan after.  I made a stockpile on that map and had 30+ piles of steel, several piles of plastel and gold, and I wanted to pack my animals...

However, it required me to right click each and every single item to do it, and I had to keep pausing over and over again and force this action repeatedly, which got old, real fast.  It made me want to stop using the caravan system all together.  Made worse by the fact that when the animals were getting close to full, I had to right click, pack all that stack, only to be told I have to select a portion of the stack, repeatedly for each animal, rather than it running a check to see if the stack can fit amongst all the available space on all the animals.

I think it would be a good idea to allow the player to right click the stockpile, and pack all to animals, rather than right clicking each item individually.  Calculating the space as it goes along till all the animals storage space is used up and the game emits a message in the top (same way it does with pregnant animals) "Caravan's animals are now full".

We'd also need a global storage button to check all the animals, rather than needing to click each one individually.  So I can find which one has useless items or items I'd rather drop in exchange for adding what I have left in my stockpile and remotely click drop from there rather than clicking every single animal to find it.

I've always hated that animals eat packaged survival meals, since the earliest versions of the game that I played.  This really needs a change so that it stops happening.  Animals can't even smell food inside it because they are completely sealed, so why would an animal go eat some random pile of plastic laying on the ground?

Actually, it would be hard to detect a shelter, but it would be nice if they don't unload anything until you've placed a caravan loading spot where they can all go to unload the gear.  So on a new map, you'd simply place a caravan loading plot in order to tell your animals to unload somewhere.

Actually it would make more sense that only haulers with no other work to do, would help pack the caravan to get it going faster.  I do agree though that haulers with no other work to do should help pack the caravans.