Scenario Editor: Add, enhance, create! (more options and more power)

[Vas]

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.


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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)


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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


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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]

[viperwasp]

I second this! I love the Scenario Editor and any improvements would be appreciated. I agree with all of the above ideas. Wow! 

+ The only idea I want to add to the above suggestions is a way to limit or disallow forming Caravan/travel. Like locking the player to just one landing site. This way the player has to survive on one map.

[Vas]

I appended your idea to the list.