Maddhawk

Join Date 09/2015

XML File TOC, Definitions, and References

So going through the various folders for the game, checking out different xml files in notepad++ and making small edits as advised elsewhere to get better maps out of the random map generator, I have begun to wonder what other tuneups can be made to improve the game?

BACKGROUND TO MY QUESTIONS BELOW

Currently I am wanting to: (these are my thoughts with my thinking impacted heavily by the "Stars at War" series by David Weber, as well as his Honorverse novelsm and mind simulations carried out while thinking about how space battles might go in reality)

Decrease the logistics cost of all ship sizes universally for all factions, now and future

Tiny ships from 1 to 0
Small ships from 3 to 1
Civilian ships from 5 to 2
Medium ships from 5 to 3
Large ships from 7 to 5
Huge ships from 10 to 7

Increasing the base logistics cap of planets, shipyards, stations, and fleets

Planets supply cap raised from 60 to 250
Shipyard supply cap raised from 60 to 200 OR 150 +50 per sponsoring planet (400 maximum logistics supply with 5 sponsoring planets)
Star base supply cap raised from 60 to 150
Fleet base supply cap raised from 24 (or whatever small number it is at the start) to 50

Boost the increase granted by various logistics impacting techs on fleet sizes

No bump on the specializations that include a logistics option just the pure logistics techs
Interstellar Logistics bumped from 10 to 25
Fleet Logistics bumped from 10 to 25
Deep Space Logistics bumped from 10 to 25
Galactic Logistics bumped from 10 to 25 (fleets finally have 150 supply matching the smallest defending fleet around star bases)

A truly well fortified planet should take multiple LARGE fleets to reduce before you can invade, not just a half dozen uber huge cap ships

Boost the hit points of a number of ship sizes as needed to balance the logistics changes

until changes are made and tested these values are just off the cuff
idea is that as weapons get drastically more powerful you will need the massive hp buffs on the bigger ships to ensure they keep their value with how big a swarm the logistics changes will permit players and AI to assemble
Manufacturing costs per hull size should also be increased across the board

Tiny ships get no change, remain 25 hp
Cargo ships get no change, remain 10 hp
Small ships get no change, remain 50 hp
Medium ships get a bump from 100hp to 250 hp
Large ships get a bump from 250 hp to 1000 hp
Huge ships get a bump from 500 hp to 5000 hp

Possibly add "role" benefits and penalties to differing ship sizes, ex:

Tiny ships gain a 100% increase to tactical speed, 50% evasion bonus vs large/huge ships, 25% damage bonus vs large/huge ships

Think Eggshells with sledge hammers, small, fast, agile, hit hard, but no way to survive a hit against them
Best given Assault or Interceptor roles pending what you want them to shoot at before they die

Small ships gain a 50% bonus to tactical speed, 25% evasion bonus vs large/huge ships, 50% increased accuracy vs tiny/small ships

Still Eggshells but purposed to go after the tiny ships and other small ships; commerce raiders if trade route piracy ever becomes a thing; also first tier to be really decent for scouting and exploration
Best given Guardian or Escort roles so they chase down the enemies pesky economy fighters (if a small ship destroys a great big one, that is a huge economic edge to the small ships side, this is born out by evidence of carriers replacing battleships IRL and in most games, novels, and movies)

Medium ships gain a 50% increased accuracy vs tiny/small, 25% range increase for kinetic, and 25% fire rate increase for missiles/torpedoes

First tier of ships to get a health boost, meat to be escorts to larger ships and fend off fighter/interceptor/bomber wing attacks; the more ideal size for scouts and surveyors
Best given Guardian or Assault roles depending on how far into the game you are, the presence of desirables to defend, and if you are the aggressor or the agressee

Large ships have a larger default galactic movement speed (3 or 4 base movement before engines added), 25% damage bonus to all weapons vs all ship types, 50% mass reduction in carrier modules

This is the first level of true capital ships sizes you get, also are the backbone of assault fleets and defense fleets, they are also the ideal hull for building fast carrier groups around
Best given Capital , Support, or Assault (if built cheap enough) roles depending on use. Carriers and Capital ships are great for protecting infrastructure and planets. They are also good at projecting power into enemy territory. Carriers in particular can devastate enemy fleets when in sufficient numbers

Huge ships have a larger default galactic movement speed (3 or 4 base movement before engines added), 25% damage bonus to all weapons vs all ship types, 50% mass reduction in ship and fleet support modules (NOT CARRIER MODULES), 50% bonus to all defensive modules

These ships have LOTS of room to add things, they are meant to be capital ships period, sure you can add a ton of carrier modules but you won't have room for much else, they should be built around massive firepower and individual ship or fleet buffing bonuses, or ECM and ECCM to harass enemy fleets. They are big, tough, powerful, and meant to be the final word on the battlefield, unless you don't escort em with anti-fighter units then they should ultimately get torn apart by massive swarms of zerglings, I mean tiny ships fitted with 2 or 3 nightmare torpedo launchers, since they would cost ZERO logistics making it theoretically possible to build a fleet of an infinite number of such tiny ships

Increase the manufacturing costs for each base hull size by 10x for medium and larger hulls
Enable construction slips in shipyards that can build different size hulls and allow for the simultaneous construction of several ships from the same yard and allocation of resources to each slip

5 slips for different ship types

1 slip for large and huge hulls
1 slip for cargo hulls
3 slips for tiny, small, and medium hulls

Resources allocated automatically depending on construction tasks

When all 3 slips types are going at once:

40% of all hammers allocated to the capital ship slip
20% of all hammers allocated to the cargo slip
40% of all hammers allocated to the 3 medium slips shared evenly

When the capital slip is going:

Capital Slip and Cargo Slip -- 80% Capital 20% Cargo
Capital Slip and Medium Slips

1 medium slip -- 80% Capital 20% Medium
2 medium slips -- 70% Capital 15%/15% Medium
3 medium slips -- 60% Capital 13.3%/13.3%/13.3% Medium

When the cargo slip is going, it receives 20% of all hammers when any other slip is going (Civilian construction is dirt cheap, period)

So with the desire to make the above changes in mind that brings me to my questions and the purpose of this post.

1. Has anyone bothered to go through all the XML files and create a "Table of Contents" listing each file and and a brief synopsis of what the file contains?

2. Has Stardock published such a "Table of Contents" to assist modding?

3. Is there a list of definitions for the various terms used in Stardock's XML files?

4. Has Stardock published a reference listing of what each entry in the XML files means?

5. Has anyone started to go through each XML file and make such an in depth reference? (This one I know would be a monstrous task for anyone not working for Stardock on GalCiv3 for reasons of not being privy to Stardock's inner thoughts and game design bible and sheer number of files)

P.S. Does anyone know which XML files to mod to change the logistics values for all hulls, logistics caps for all defensible assets (planets, shipyards, star bases), standard logistics techs so all races benefit including custom races, and the XML file to adjust hull baseline hp and manufacturing costs?

P.S.S. I tried to place my background wall of text in spoiler tags and they are not working. Anyone know why not?

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(logistics changes)

Three things:

First, Tiny ships cost 2 logistics in the base game.

Second, making it possible for any ship type to be stacked infinitely is incredibly dangerous to game balance, and your proposal natively permits Tiny ships to do so, and will allow Small ships to do so with a Hyperion Logistics Center at the planet upon which they're built. You can attain roughly the same effect by increasing the logistical limit and having 1 (preferably 2, since otherwise it can become 0 with a Hyperion Logistics Center) logistic point per Tiny ship, (base value) for Small hulls, (base value)*2 for "civilian" hulls (presumably cargo, but remember, please, that cargo hulls need not be used for civilian vessels, nor are they clearly a civilian hulltype within the game; noncombat, sure, but not strictly civilian), (base value)*3 for Medium, (base value)*5 for Large, and (base value)*7 for Huge; adjust the logistics caps accordingly.

Third, I would point out that the proposed changes to logistics values further increase the value of larger hull classes, making the smaller hull classes even less valuable than they are at present. You're proposing to greatly increase the HP/logistics and capacity/logistics of the larger hull classes (even before the changes you propose later with regards to HP) while simultaneously suggesting only marginal increases in the drawbacks of the larger ship classes. Under your proposed system, I see little reason to bother with the smaller ship classes except when I can stack them infinitely (0 logistics cost), and probably not even then if it'll adversely affect my fleet mobility.

50% evasion bonus vs large/huge ships, 25% damage bonus vs large/huge ships

25% evasion bonus vs large/huge ships, 50% increased accuracy vs tiny/small ships

50% increased accuracy vs tiny/small

I don't believe that these are possible at present.

ShipHullStatDefs.XML to change the logistics values of the hulls, RaceTraitDefs.XML to change the empire logistics bonus (the one shown in faction selection and which is available when creating a custom faction), GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML to change the base logistics cap and the logistics caps for planets/shipyards/stations, the various *TechDefs.XML to change the logistics bonuses from technologies (and yes, you need to do it for each and every single one of them), ShipHullStatDefs.XML again for the base HP and manufacturing costs of the hulls. You might be able to get around editing the various *TechDefs.XML files by creating an event (triggered at game start) that just applies a multiplier to the logistics cap for every empire, though I don't know if the multiplier bonus type works with an effect type of logistics; if that doesn't work, you could try just adding a flat value to all empires' logistics scores in the same way, though it'd leave you with issues with regards to the tech-based logistical bonuses.

Enable construction slips in shipyards that can build different size hulls and allow for the simultaneous construction of several ships from the same yard and allocation of resources to each slip

I don't believe this is possible to mod into the game at present.

1. Has anyone bothered to go through all the XML files and create a "Table of Contents" listing each file and and a brief synopsis of what the file contains?

2. Has Stardock published such a "Table of Contents" to assist modding?

3. Is there a list of definitions for the various terms used in Stardock's XML files?

4. Has Stardock published a reference listing of what each entry in the XML files means?

5. Has anyone started to go through each XML file and make such an in depth reference? (This one I know would be a monstrous task for anyone not working for Stardock on GalCiv3 for reasons of not being privy to Stardock's inner thoughts and game design bible and sheer number of files)

1. Not as far as I'm aware.

2. Not as far as I'm aware.

3. Doubtful, but most of the terms are reasonably transparent (not all; "goodsandservices" is "morale" within the game, for example).

4. Not as far as I'm aware.

5. Not as far as I'm aware.

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I had already thought about the Hyperion Logistics Center and changed the modifier to 0. Basically, its only purpose is now to buff a Hyperion Shrinker.

I am aware of the impact of the changes I want to make to my game skew the game further in favor of bigger ships. That is partially the point. I want to be able to make fleets of 20+ huge ships and battle other similar fleets. I hate having caps placed on my ability to stack units and then wage war. On the other hand I know I need some limits or my PC won't be able to even run the battles.

The idea to give ships individual bonuses baked into the hull are supposed to make smaller ships more attractive to those who like em and also want to give the changes I seeking to enable in my game a try in their own.

Quoting joeball123,

reply 1

I found all those and edited most to how I want them to be. It is nice to see confirmation I found the right files. On a side note, however, I did not find anything where I could specify a change to the default fleet logistics cap at game start in the RaceTraitDefs.XML file. I found a generic one set to 10 that I have modified but I have yet to see if changing has the desired effect I want as of this posting. Further more, going into the GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML files I was unable to find entries to alter the logistics cap on colonized planets or shipyards. Only star bases had an entry.

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So the game doesn't like ships with no logistics cost. Starts up then closes to desktop. No error report when it closes. The entry in the GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML for star base logistics cap apparently is shared to include planets and shipyards. There are no separate entries for each. However, I can now build massive fleets and make massive orbital fortifications.

After all the only proper way to secure a planet is to control the orbitals.

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Quoting Maddhawk,

reply 2

On a side note, however, I did not find anything where I could specify a change to the default fleet logistics cap at game start in the RaceTraitDefs.XML file.

RaceTraitDefs contains two fleet logistics entries, one for Organized +1 and another for Organized +2; these are the empire bonuses, things which increase the base logistics value. Had I meant to indicate that the base logistics cap for fleets could be found in RaceTraitDefs.XML, I would have said something about a base logistics cap being present in the file, rather than indicating that the file contained only bonuses. It should have been reasonably clear from what I wrote that GalCiv3GlobalDefs contained the base logistics caps for fleets and for planets/shipyards/starbases (which I referred to as 'stations' earlier), even though I suppose some confusion is understandable when referring to a 'base logistics cap' (though I would have thought that with an explicit mention of a separate logistics cap for stations, which are clearly starbases, it would have been obvious that the 'base logistics cap' is in fact the one for fleets, the only one which players typically care about to any significant degree).

Quoting Maddhawk,

reply 2

Further more, going into the GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML files I was unable to find entries to alter the logistics cap on colonized planets or shipyards. Only star bases had an entry.

I would not be certain that there are separate variables for planets and shipyards. Shipyards are just a special type of space station, after all, planets aren't that much different, and adding separate variables for these doesn't accomplish much. You could see if you can add a logistics bonus to ShipyardDefs.XML to try to increase the size of the fleet able to defend a shipyard as distinct from the fleets which can defend stations and planets, you can try adding a logistics bonus to the colony and civilization capital improvements to get a colony defense fleet logistics cap which is distinct from the shipyard and station defense fleet logistics caps, and you can try adding logistics bonuses to StarbaseDefs or to some of the starbase modules in StarbaseModuleDefs to get a station defense fleet logistics cap which is distinct from the colony and shipyard defense fleet logistics caps (and, potentially, distinct defense fleet caps between station types or between stations upgraded to differing degrees), though I'm not sure whether or not this will work.

Quoting Maddhawk,

reply 2

Yeah, I understood that, but the degree to which your proposed changes improve the larger hull classes completely wrecks any chance of the proposed bonuses to smaller ship classes being worth anything. +50 jamming on tiny and small hulls? Useless against small and medium hulls that get +50 accuracy (I'm pretty sure that the chance to hit a target is simply (attacker accuracy) - (target jamming), possibly with a speed modifier so small that it's unnoticeable in practice) and doesn't do nearly enough to compensate for being two or three orders of magnitude behind large and huge hulls in HP (even infinite jamming can only increase the effective HP of a ship by a factor of about 10 unless the minimum hit chance, defined in GalCiv3GlobalDefs to be 10%, isn't working) with no advantages in damage output or defense strength, not when the larger ship classes are enormously more logistically efficient (with the partial exception of the proposed 0-logistics Tiny hull, which can partly compensate by virtue of there not being any limit on how many you could shove into a fleet short of the number of them you can build, but as Tiny hulls have next to no space for a decent armament plus a decent drive setup, they're barely worth using as independent warships rather than carrier-spawned vessels anyways, not when you're looking at a decent factory world having the output to build even the largest ships within maybe 20 turns even with a significant manufacturing cost increase on the large vessels and only being able to build one Tiny ship per turn barring an annoying level of micromanagement).

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Quoting joeball123,

reply 4

RaceTraitDefs contains two fleet logistics entries, one for Organized +1 and another for Organized +2; these are the empire bonuses, things which increase the base logistics value. Had I meant to indicate that the base logistics cap for fleets could be found in RaceTraitDefs.XML, I would have said something about a base logistics cap being present in the file, rather than indicating that the file contained only bonuses. It should have been reasonably clear from what I wrote that GalCiv3GlobalDefs contained the base logistics caps for fleets and for planets/shipyards/starbases (which I referred to as 'stations' earlier), even though I suppose some confusion is understandable when referring to a 'base logistics cap' (though I would have thought that with an explicit mention of a separate logistics cap for stations, which are clearly starbases, it would have been obvious that the 'base logistics cap' is in fact the one for fleets, the only one which players typically care about to any significant degree)

Sure are aggressive in this post. I took the liberty to highlight your aggression there. I certainly didn't criticize you in my post.

Now let me respond with the code in question that elicited my comments regarding GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML and RaceTraitDefs.XML.

From GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML

<GlobalFactionMods>
           <EffectType>LogisticsCap</EffectType>
           <Target>
               <TargetType>Faction</TargetType>
           </Target>
           <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
           <Value>10</Value>
       </GlobalFactionMods>

       <GlobalFactionMods>
           <EffectType>StationLogisticsCap</EffectType>
           <Target>
               <TargetType>Faction</TargetType>
           </Target>
           <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
           <Value>60</Value>
       </GlobalFactionMods>

Here we have the two entries concerning logistics in the Global Definitions. These are the ONLY two entries in the entire file. Now what leads to confusion is that in so many cases Stardock has broken down things on a PER FACTION basis. In this case they haven't. So for someone new to modding, like myself, it is only natural to think that there should be something that looks like the following:

<GlobalFactionMods>
           <EffectType>TerranLogisticsCap</EffectType>
           <Target>
               <TargetType>Faction</TargetType>
           </Target>
           <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
           <Value>10</Value>
       </GlobalFactionMods>

<GlobalFactionMods>
           <EffectType>DrenginLogisticsCap</EffectType>
           <Target>
               <TargetType>Faction</TargetType>
           </Target>
           <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
           <Value>20</Value>
       </GlobalFactionMods>

As you can see, the above would make sense to see something like in a file somewhere. I even gave the Drengin a 10 point lead based on the back story highlighting the Drengin's blatant militancy. Going further into the XML files you find files for generic tech trees and generic starting systems.

Now about the StationLogisticsCap. When you read the word "Station" you think "Space Station." So then I wonder, well what about PlanetLogisticsCap and ShipyardLogisticsCap? Hmm? It makes perfect sense for those two entries to exist as well.

and from RaceTraitDefs.XML

<RaceTrait>
    <InternalName>Organized1</InternalName>
    <DisplayName>Organized1_Name</DisplayName>
    <Description>Organized1_Desc</Description>
    <Mod>
      <EffectType>LogisticsCap</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Faction</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>6</Value>
    </Mod>
</RaceTrait>

<RaceTrait>
    <InternalName>Organized2</InternalName>
    <DisplayName>Organized2_Name</DisplayName>
    <Description>Organized2_Desc</Description>
    <Mod>
      <EffectType>LogisticsCap</EffectType>
      <Target>
        <TargetType>Faction</TargetType>
      </Target>
      <BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
      <Value>3</Value>
    </Mod>
</RaceTrait>

I know what those two entries are about. That wasn't what I was looking for nor even mentioned in any of my posts. I was looking for something more again to what I posted above when I looked in the GlobalDefs.XML, a DrenginLogisticsCap, TerranLogisticsCap, and so on etc.

Hope that clears up what I was seeing and saying.

Quoting joeball123,

reply 4

Whole point is that small ships armed with a limited number of "ship killer" missiles are going after the big guns, and if they live long enough to fire on the big guns then they can pop it like a pinata.

Recommend reading "We Few" by David Weber and John Ringo, space combat scenes for an idea of how I envision tactical strike fighters being used. Also similar to the assault upon the Death Star in Star Wars IV and VI wherein Luke fires two torpedoes into the ray shielded reactor ventilation shaft in IV and in VI one fighter shoots up the shield emitters for the bridge shields on Vader's Super Star Destroyer. Then yet a 3rd fighter crashes into the bridge causing the Super Star Destroyer to loose control and crash into the Death Star 2.0. Also the "Stars at War I and II" omnibuses by David Weber make great use of varying fleet compositions including fighter carriers.

The +50 jamming bonus is ONLY vs Large and Huge hull sizes, smaller ships are supposed to be "agile" enough to properly dog-fight and kill the oncoming fighters before they can unleash hell into the capital ships and carriers. With that being the case it makes sense for tiny - medium ships to have a buff to offset this jamming and in fact increase their accuracy to 50% ABOVE the baseline in the game. (Yeah yeah, I know lasers are 100% already by default.)

You have a point about the construction though. That one occurred to me as well and I have no answer since a shipyard is limited to one ship at a time construction.

Bottom line is this, these are just ideas and new ones at that. There is room for improvement to be made and better balancing to be done. Then there are some things that I want to do that cannot be done at all as of this post, which you pointed out. The bonuses specific to hulls and the multi-ship construction from a single shipyard.

P.S. Do you know how to get the spoiler tags to work?

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Quoting Maddhawk,

reply 5

Sure are aggressive in this post. I took the liberty to highlight your aggression there. I certainly didn't criticize you in my post.

You'll get used to it. There's nothing quite like watching Joe deliver a barrage of angry maths.

Take a look at reply 3 here:

https://forums.galciv3.com/471999/page/1/#3592658

It will help you figure out what can and cannot be done through modding by looking at the schema. Many of the things you're wanting to do can't be done; other bits can, but not in the way you're hoping. The majority of modifiers are fairly self-explanatory... but some are bizarre, opaque and obscure. For those, you just need to experiment wildly; the schema will tell you what experiments are possible.

The Schema dictates everything we can do, and determines what values can be used, too. When editing any file, you should check the schema for that file before attempting anything.

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Quoting Maddhawk,

reply 5

P.S. Do you know how to get the spoiler tags to work?

No.

Quoting Maddhawk,

reply 5

You have a point about the construction though. That one occurred to me as well and I have no answer since a shipyard is limited to one ship at a time construction.

You might be able to get around that with event modding, if you can make an event trigger on construction of certain sizes of ships and have the event spawn in a number of ships of the same class (although even if you can do this, you might be forced to use a ship class known to the XML, which means either a base-game design or a design that you add as a new blueprint in the XML, rather than a player design created during the game), but I don't know; I've not really looked into event modding at all. Otherwise, the closest you can come is to just build several shipyards at the planet, assign each of them a 'dummy' sponsor from among your lab and market worlds to prevent the game from blocking the end-turn button due to orphaned shipyards, and then have a factory world that you assign to a different shipyard each turn or two. Manufacturing beyond that required to complete the current project is stored at the shipyard for the next project so it's technically doable to emulate being able to sponsor several shipyards, but it's a pain if you're dealing with more than a handful of shipyards and it's not really worth it, either.

Oh, and just as a warning, you should be very careful if you decide to try to get around this by means of adding one of the various fighter types to the tiny or small hull types. If fighters are added to the hulltype used by the fighters, the game at least used to crash upon entering a tactical battle because the game would attempt to spawn an infinite number of fighters (because each fighter spawned spawns a new fighter). This will also occur if you create a loop (tiny hulls spawn small fighters, small hulls spawn tiny fighters, and so tiny hulls spawn small fighters which spawn tiny fighters which spawn small fighters which ...). It's possible that this has been changed since it was reported a long time ago, but I don't recall it ever being mentioned in the patch notes and it's not really something likely to be that high of a priority.

Quoting Maddhawk,

reply 5

. That wasn't what I was looking for nor even mentioned in any of my posts. I was looking for something more again to what I posted above when I looked in the GlobalDefs.XML, a DrenginLogisticsCap, TerranLogisticsCap, and so on etc.

The closest you'll find to that kind of thing is in FactionDefs.XML, but that just references the entries in RaceTraitDefs.XML or AbilityDefs.XML, at least in so far as empire bonuses are concerned.

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