It's a long one again :)

Ok I've done some Alphamod 1.5 with Primitives early period playthroughs and read through some of his descriptor files. I also used "alpha traditions tweaks" (really mandatory for alphamod IMO) and Hostile Worlds (though it wouldn't be absolutely required for Primitives). I also used Plentiful traditions and NSC 5.0.

I'll list some items (good and bad) seperately in another post.

For now though, 2 really interesting things he's done. Firsty, in his Utopia for Alphamod suplement, he's made Voidbourne available as a first pick perk. This is significant because it will allow players to build orbital habitats early on. I have no idea what Paradox were thinking making them late game as it's likely any pre-FTL race is going to concentrate on Mars like planets and Orbital habits off the bat. Inn fact if the HW was facing a horrible situation Orbital habitats would be a priority.

But the most interesting approach Ash has taken (and I think he's absolutely nailed it) is in the hostile worlds techs, discovery tradition and follow up surveys using is his Planetary Survey Corps. This aspect of Alphamod worked outstandingly with Primitives.

The tech basically runs (I might be slightly out here) Spaceport Tech -- Shuttlecraft --Survey Corps (unlocks Barren) - then Exo Ops (unlocks Asteroid) which is also expanded logically further through appropriate techs and edicts with the Hostile Worlds supplement. Also the traditions tweak introduces a Discovery tradition Planetary Survey Corps that wlil fire off a tech called "Refined Colonisation", which also introduces the Barren world colonisation and follow up survey edicts.

Once the appropriate follow up survey edict is enabled the corps will get back to you from time to time (and you can say "no more please") with candidates you can send a science vessel to. If you're interested in the results you can start a "prep" project (always takes 365 days + when I used Primitives). It places a Survey Corps building ready to use for when you send a colony that can suppport it
.
Once you leave your home system, even if by STL, they will go to work in systems you've surveyed as long as the applicable edict is ticked - which costs 0.27 inflnc/month for barren/asteroid surveys and then same for each of more hostile type if you have the Hostile Worlds supp and required tech..

Now the nice thing was in this just last game; I was sitting having an boringl time with just a HW to play with in a system with 3 gas giants and other sundry rubbish (not even an asteroid belt) once I got the Refined Colonisation tech , not long after getting the tech I got an event that the corps had found a candadite in a moon orbiting one of the gas giants and would I like to survey it. I was also asked (not sure if at same time) whether I wanted them to keep looking.

It is all believable and the time lag whilst corps go off to re-examine the previously discounted rocks fits in nicely with Primitives. I think the rocket pad- shuttlecraft then the in system Survey Corps tech chain is a perfect for fit for Primitives. If the "Refined Colonisation" tech that Planetary Survey Corps gives under Discovery tradition is also a requirement ( I don't think it is, I believe it's a bonus shortcut to it) then that would allow for numerous playstyles when using Primitives. Some people might be utterly disinterested in pussing the bounds, others might have no need because they're spoilt and yet others like to squeeze space out of every rock.

@Pode

Right now for the current issues with an Alpha-Primitives combo:
I played 5 test games, playing until a few years after the ftl breakout phase,


DON'T use the Alphamod Homeworld ethics supplement with Primitives !. It works fine but it blows the unity play balance to kingdom come in a Primitives setting. It introduces ethos / combo ethos specific buildings of which most give unity.

The graphics of the primitive buildings on your HW show up correctly in Alpha; this was not the case at all in CHS.

Some level 1 buildings are listed twice in the buildings available but I have no doubt that would be something a comp patch could address.

You start off being able to build colony ships . They are STL but atleast you can't redesign them until you get the tech.

The spaceport gets Orbital Laboratory and Modular Construction Bay (for SP modules, constructer and upkeep reductions) at start but that's ok .. our own ISS is a laboratory.

Radio Telescope and Rocket pad laucnher buildings always turn up very early but I think that's a good thing flavourwise anyway.

The first faction seems to be repeating , it seems as if a new faction is spawned and overwrites the first one. This eventually corrected itself in by about 2123 in last play but that might be because I'd finally surveyed an extra-solar system.

One of the early buildings "traditional farms" is a nice fit but since it also produces 1 unity it can potentially be a unity well. Luckly Ash has mode it only buildable on native food tiles.

In every case Space cows visited me and with the extra buildings available getting tech to rapidly research them gave me Energy Siphon weapon rather easily. Just worth noting.

Some policies don't show up (under edicts and policies) correctly but that could be as a result of something else I think I have still activated (Galactic Policies mod ?)

The worst thing though was the combination of extra goodies in Alphamod created a situation that I almost always had some form of practical FTL by about 2125 and in once case I knocked back researching the Warp drive (came up first) in 2121 !. Another game I ended up with WH and Warp by 2132. Obviously that is a showstopper without some sort of addressing, when combining the 2 mods.

Overall, one take out I got was that some people are likely to use a variety of mods (known and unknown) that mess with building and tech goodies. I think it would be worth considering pushing the practical drives up a tier or mabe increasing research cost dramatically, or a combo of that. Without doing so, the whole premise of Primitives is put under stress.

The same was not true with your pre-ftl mods because you were only creating a slow start not a whole new "pre-game" gameworld. A lot of work is going to be put in by M's for the event chains and you don't want that wasted by achieving FTL in any short timescale. You have a STL windup alone of 4000 you said , which is 11 years roughly ?.

I don't even trust Paradox not to stealth introduce changes that won't negatively impact a slow pre-ftl start mod so IMO the best approach would be for YOU to control the situation with an iron fist. If you take control in deciding the pre-reqs, tech costs / tiers for the practical drives
( and maybe organise comp patches for other mods; important popular ones), then if Paradox or some other mods dump copious amounts of research producing goodies at level 1 tiers, it won't be an issue.

It's just my opinion, by I feel it would be quite resonable to take at an absolute min 40 yrs and hopefully it'd take much longer with 50-100 or more years for a pract FTL drive being wonderful playwise. 40 years only allows 1-2 STL destinations per ship basically and with the Alphamod combo (or any other research goody buildings mod) getting FTl in the 20s was a killer as I hadn't even had a ship end the windup sequence before I had FTL . There's no reason for a race not to have awesome power generation, weapons and shields; have advanced medicine and be highly technological but yet be unable to FTL. Obviously too many Advanced AI starts could become very dangerous affairs in such a situation.

I think Ash's Planetary Survey Corps is absolutely the best way to tackle the home system colonisation. You'd have to seriously hit the FTL practical drives development time hard to use Primitives with Alpha atm. Just too much research being produced.

I'm going to go and make a mess with some files and experiment with the drive techs. If I get anywhere with it I'll pass it on to you.

Cheers and keep more Primitives coming ! ,
Starburst

"The graphics of the primitive buildings on your HW show up correctly in Alpha; this was not the case at all in CHS."

Eh? They worked for me in testing, but I only had Primitive and CHS enabled. What are you getting instead of the primitive farms and factories? The graphics for the basic tier 0 buildings you can upgradeto / build immediately are almost identical to the vanilla starting buildings, but you should be starting with the truly primitive graphics set already built.

I never saw any Primitive buildings grphxs running CHS. I was using CHS, Plentiful Trad, NSC 5.0, Primitives, Dark UI (with 1080 fix) and Risa's Unofficial Patch to 1.5.1 during the CHS testing

Solid feedback on the features. The change to Voidborne / habitats, and the habitability tiers/techs both sound like ideas worth asking permission to steal. Survey Corps I think is a task I'd rather leave to vanilla because of the tradeoffs involved in sending an STL science ship to survey.

I'm surprised that you're generating enough science to churn thru physics techs so fast as to get FTL that quickly. It should be rare enough to take 18 techs average, so you'd be averaging a physics tech every year.

Well that's just odd. I'll have to run a test tonight with Risa's, I definitely want to be compatible with that. What were you getting on your homeworld instead? Both the gfx and the building bonus numbers plz, that may help me figure out what's going on.

I build labs as fast as possible and I use copious use of "Assisted Research" tech with science ships.

I must say I was getting fortunate each play as I had many science tiles. I'm not usually that lucky, its more favoured to Social tech normally on HW. Last game I had I had 5 lvl 1 labs going ,assisted research and 2-3 research stations by the 2127. It can add up fast if you make a point of getting research. Snowballs quickly.

As for Alphamod compatibility I'm rather confused. He's just released 1.5 and a whole host of extras. Ofcourse he's not the most patient chap but I hadn't heard he was dumping the whole thing.

When did he say he's effectively dumping Alphamod ?

The alphamod thing was just to take a look at if it works and how the hostile worlds work there. If you can get CHS (Echo ?) to hand it over to you so others can tailor it to Primitives, it'd work fine.

I'd have to set up anew again but from memory I was getting basic hydroponic farm and powerplant buildings grphx only. No primitive building graphics at all. No primitive, farms or factory gphx they were all vanilla basic buildings grphx.

Nope.. no idea where you got that Ash is not maintaining. He just updated the 1.5 ver on 2nd May. He's released a stack of stuff recently.

I wanted to remove the base 5 science in each category you get for just existing (maybe leave it at 1 not 5) and make you work for your tech, but couldn't figure out how to do it. Sounds like I need to try that again. Maybe something more too.

I think the 1.5 update and related stuff is him clearing his todo list and getting to a point to declare it finished instead of just dropping everything. I could be wrong. Or I could be right and he could change his mind. We'll see.

Sorry if this sounds obvious.
Only issue with changing the base science amount that is you effect every tech; not just the ones you want.

Assuming humanity doen't blow itself up prematurely, we'll probably be in a position to uplift spiecies well before we can FTL

Mal and I just had similar convo in the dev thread. Think we've got a plan for the next update, we'll ask you to put that thru its paces and see if you still get FTL too quick.

I was considering to trying something.
In your opinion, if I was to change the preq for the practical drives in your ftle for the each "....ftl_15" drive to use "tech_physics_lab_2" instead of "tech_physics_lab_1", what sort of impact do you you think it might have ?

ie Applied Quantum Physics

If AQP is a tier 2 tech, I expect it will cause all 3 tier 2 practical FTL techs to immediately appear on completion of the research regardless of their very low weight, because prereqs on the same tier worked like that back when I made PreFTL. If weight is respected now, that's not a bad change if FTL is still coming available too soon. Practical FTL certainly seems like it should require heavy investment in and knowledge of Applied Quantum Physics.

Ah, so (unless it is respected now), you were controlling them by spliting the tier requirements.
Hmm ..nasty and sloppy oversight by Paradox if still going on.