Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kat]

I've considered requiring blueprints for certain buildings in the past.
From a lore standpoint, most of the technologies that are part of my mod are not very advanced. Someone in the sector should be able to read on the internet how to build orbital mirrors or atmosphere processors.

Fair enough. There's certainly a lot of mirrors/shades already existing, such as around Eventide, that people could easily study.

Still think it'd be neat to find a planet full of dinosaurs, possibly after talking to a guy in the bar, to kick off the Mesozoic Park industry.

[Mcgrolox]

From a lore standpoint, most of the technologies that are part of my mod are not very advanced. Someone in the sector should be able to read on the internet how to build orbital mirrors or atmosphere processors - the same is not true for the planetary shield.

I have to say that I dont agree with this take on the lore. Firstly if terraforming tech was easy to replicate and produce, with or without existing examples, the larger factions would still be doing it, and they aren't - no one has since Mbaye-Gogol bit it in the second AI war, since that was their corporate monopoly and no one else could do more than really rudimentary changes - even Mbaye-Gogol were only able to make relatively small changes according to planet to planet lore bases (ie: Qaras, Yma). Secondly, there is a drastic difference in the engineering specifications to be able to build one solar shade/mirror/atmospheric processor, and to be able to build a network of them functionally enough to accomplish terraforming appropriately, and it is much more complicated than simply adding more. I understand that for simplicity's sake the game shows one mirror/shade or three mirrors/shades, but in reality there would have to hundreds of thousands, they would have to be regularly maintained against micrometeorite strikes and radiation to not deprecate over time (see also: Asharu in Corvus), and they would have to be placed in exactly the right places in relation both to the planet and each other to accomplish their goals, and the same goes for processors.

All of that trivia minutia and stupidly opinionated bias over realness emulation vs functionality in a sim aside, the actual changes aren't necessary or important. It is of course your mod, and I have been using it because I like it and will probably continue to do so, so don't read too much into my pedantics on real world terraforming theory with hints of insinuative but obscure in game lore references.

I'm definitely not going to implement terraforming-related artifacts or special items after seeing the negative feedback DIYP got for doing that (due to the issues I mentioned above).

Ideally the player should be able to control terraforming remotely in addition to viewing progress. Unfortunately I'm not sure from a technical standpoint how to make that work correctly - I think I would have to overwrite the market-related classes from vanilla, which I can't do since it would create compatibility issues. I could make it possible to view terraforming progress on the industry tooltips for terraforming buildings, but that would be awkward without also providing the ability to control it remotely.

This is all fair, I knew you would know more than I would which is why I really only wanted to throw the ideas out there in case both you liked them and they were feasible, else I'm happy to keep using it as it is. The only idea I have that might work differently from overwriting market classes would be to find out how IndEvo did their interface for the courier ports, and/or combine that with Nex's remote fleet request concepts by asking/working with their respective authors if they were ok with that. But I have no idea how those work at a code level, so for all I know this is meaningless and incorrect gibberish and if so that's fine, no biggy. Thanks for all of the consideration, truly

[Manice]

I apologize if this has been addressed before, I went back 30 pages or so and didn't see this mentioned. I can't seem to build seafloor cities on water planets. Is there some setting in the mod file that I'm missing? If not I'd like to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

[Floorbo]

Boggled this mod is a major reason i love this game keep it up and thank you very much.

[Mcgrolox]

Question regarding some of the auxiliary terraforming structures that have to be enabled in the config (and Chameleon), such as the Harmonic Dampener and the Planetary Agrav Field - The harmonic dampener can be built on planets that don't have tectonic activity, but then only has an effect when improved and/or given an ai core - on the other hand, the Magnetoshield isn't allowed to be built on planets that aren't irradiated, with the citation being that it wouldn't be necessary/useful, akin to Atmospheric processors on a planet with optimal atmospheric conditions. But both Chameleon and the Planetary Agrav field can be built on planets that don't have subpops/rogue ai cores or gravitational issues, respectively, but can't be improved or given AI. This also applies to the Genelab, which then is so that it can give its passive improvement to the Mesozoic park, but if there are any synergies to Chameleon or the Agrav Field they don't seem to be apparent. Chameleon could simply be something one would build pre-emptively in case they expected to get subpops or rogue ai's from any necessary source, but I feel like I'm missing something with the Agrav field.

TLDR, do the Planetary Agrav Field and Chameleon have synergies or functions aside from their main 'terraforming' functions, or is the fact that the Agrav field, at least, can be built on planets without gravitational anomalies just a minor oversight or postponed minor feature (since it can be disabled in config and is by default anyways)?

[Yunru]

Chameleon can remove Lewdic Cells.

[Kat]

I just found a decivilised planet that had stellar shades, which was neat !

[Wispborne]

Do you store IP addresses, or just extract the geolocation from them, save those, and toss the IP?

[boggled]

This is all fair, I knew you would know more than I would which is why I really only wanted to throw the ideas out there in case both you liked them and they were feasible, else I'm happy to keep using it as it is. The only idea I have that might work differently from overwriting market classes would be to find out how IndEvo did their interface for the courier ports, and/or combine that with Nex's remote fleet request concepts by asking/working with their respective authors if they were ok with that. But I have no idea how those work at a code level, so for all I know this is meaningless and incorrect gibberish and if so that's fine, no biggy. Thanks for all of the consideration, truly

I'll look into how those mods did it and see if it would work for terraforming. No promises though!

I apologize if this has been addressed before, I went back 30 pages or so and didn't see this mentioned. I can't seem to build seafloor cities on water planets. Is there some setting in the mod file that I'm missing? If not I'd like to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Does the planet have the water-covered surface condition? What version of the mod are you on?

Boggled this mod is a major reason i love this game keep it up and thank you very much.

I'm glad you're enjoying it!

Question regarding some of the auxiliary terraforming structures that have to be enabled in the config (and Chameleon), such as the Harmonic Dampener and the Planetary Agrav Field - The harmonic dampener can be built on planets that don't have tectonic activity, but then only has an effect when improved and/or given an ai core - on the other hand, the Magnetoshield isn't allowed to be built on planets that aren't irradiated, with the citation being that it wouldn't be necessary/useful, akin to Atmospheric processors on a planet with optimal atmospheric conditions. But both Chameleon and the Planetary Agrav field can be built on planets that don't have subpops/rogue ai cores or gravitational issues, respectively, but can't be improved or given AI. This also applies to the Genelab, which then is so that it can give its passive improvement to the Mesozoic park, but if there are any synergies to Chameleon or the Agrav Field they don't seem to be apparent. Chameleon could simply be something one would build pre-emptively in case they expected to get subpops or rogue ai's from any necessary source, but I feel like I'm missing something with the Agrav field.

TLDR, do the Planetary Agrav Field and Chameleon have synergies or functions aside from their main 'terraforming' functions, or is the fact that the Agrav field, at least, can be built on planets without gravitational anomalies just a minor oversight or postponed minor feature (since it can be disabled in config and is by default anyways)?

Hmm, you're right. There is an inconsistency in that the Planetary Agrav Field can be built even if it would do nothing. I'll change this in the next patch. Also the Magnetoshield permanently removes radiation instead of suppressing it - I'll change that too.

It's intended that the Chameleon and Genelab can be built even if they would do nothing because the player might want to build them preemptively (ex. if they plan to add buildings that have high Pather interest, or terraform the planet into a water world).

I just found a decivilised planet that had stellar shades, which was neat !

Yeah, those are generated by vanilla though. I can't take credit!

Do you store IP addresses, or just extract the geolocation from them, save those, and toss the IP?

I save the IP addresses. I need them to help ensure the same player isn't represented in the database more than once.

Do you think there's any harm in maintaining the IP addresses?

[Wispborne]

Do you store IP addresses, or just extract the geolocation from them, save those, and toss the IP?

I save the IP addresses. I need them to help ensure the same player isn't represented in the database more than once.

Do you think there's any harm in maintaining the IP addresses?

Personally I think a mod has absolutely no business sending data online at all, at least not without very obviously notifying the user (and not even then, really). I consider it a breach of trust - it's just not something that mods do. I know that it's mentioned on the mod page, but am also pretty sure that if we took a poll, most users would not know.

That aside, logging IPs isn't worrying, if you did get hacked and all that exposed, there's nothing special that could be done with it as far as I'm aware. Might wanna have a privacy policy though so people know what specifically you are logging.

[boggled]

Do you store IP addresses, or just extract the geolocation from them, save those, and toss the IP?

I save the IP addresses. I need them to help ensure the same player isn't represented in the database more than once.

Do you think there's any harm in maintaining the IP addresses?

Personally I think a mod has absolutely no business sending data online at all, at least not without very obviously notifying the user (and not even then, really). I consider it a breach of trust - it's just not something that mods do. I know that it's mentioned on the mod page, but am also pretty sure that if we took a poll, most users would not know.

That aside, logging IPs isn't worrying, if you did get hacked and all that exposed, there's nothing special that could be done with it as far as I'm aware. Might wanna have a privacy policy though so people know what specifically you are logging.

I log the IP address, the geolocation information I get from a third party API based on that IP address, what version of TASC is running, the TASC settings configuration, the mod list, and a UUID which is stored in a text file in the starsector saves folder.

I considered making the data collection opt-in due to the concerns you outlined above, but I decided to make it opt-out (via the settings toggle) because I thought very few players would care whether their IP address is being logged and almost everyone would leave the default setting unchanged. Given that I don't sell the data or otherwise profit from developing this mod, I don't think it's problematic.

[Raio_Verusia]

I log the IP address, the geolocation information I get from a third party API based on that IP address, what version of TASC is running, the TASC settings configuration, the mod list, and a UUID which is stored in a text file in the starsector saves folder.

I considered making the data collection opt-in due to the concerns you outlined above, but I decided to make it opt-out (via the settings toggle) because I thought very few players would care whether their IP address is being logged and almost everyone would leave the default setting unchanged. Given that I don't sell the data or otherwise profit from developing this mod, I don't think it's problematic.

Opt-in, or Opt-out, many thanks for this change. I was not aware there was collection going on and would prefer to opt out myself.

I wonder if it's possible to create an "on new game" or "on load" message when first getting into the campaign map to provide a message asking players to opt-in, or some kind of log message in intel explaining, and using a console command to toggle-switch the data system on? Not to back-seat mod but that could be a nifty solution. I am no coder, so I would have no idea.

[boggled]

I log the IP address, the geolocation information I get from a third party API based on that IP address, what version of TASC is running, the TASC settings configuration, the mod list, and a UUID which is stored in a text file in the starsector saves folder.

I considered making the data collection opt-in due to the concerns you outlined above, but I decided to make it opt-out (via the settings toggle) because I thought very few players would care whether their IP address is being logged and almost everyone would leave the default setting unchanged. Given that I don't sell the data or otherwise profit from developing this mod, I don't think it's problematic.

Opt-in, or Opt-out, many thanks for this change. I was not aware there was collection going on and would prefer to opt out myself.

I wonder if it's possible to create an "on new game" or "on load" message when first getting into the campaign map to provide a message asking players to opt-in, or some kind of log message in intel explaining, and using a console command to toggle-switch the data system on? Not to back-seat mod but that could be a nifty solution. I am no coder, so I would have no idea.

That's probably feasible from a coding standpoint, but I think it would lead to a lot of confusion because many players aren't familiar with how IP addresses work. They'll see a warning message and assume it's something bad, when in fact it's completely harmless and their IP address is already being logged constantly by almost every website they visit.

If my assumption that most players don't care about data collection proves to be incorrect, I'll stop the collection or only store it for a very limited time (like 24 hours).

Edit: You can see that this forum is logging your IP address - look at the bottom right corner of each post!

[Wispborne]

I considered doing a similar thing in Persean Chronicles, but logging errors instead of mods. The main reason I didn't is that it's not reality that governs reception - you and I know it's harmless, most people don't, and the risk of pitchforks wasn't worth being able to fix bugs proactively.

The other major reason I didn't is that I didn't want to be part of normalizing this, because I don't trust that it won't be abused eventually if having mods phone home becomes standard. And there's a lot of slippery slope.

Just my thoughts.

[Kat]

I just found a decivilised planet that had stellar shades, which was neat !

Yeah, those are generated by vanilla though. I can't take credit!

They are ? How ?

I had found a planet, and noted some sensor contacts, when I got closer, there were 3 stellar shades in orbit. Something I'd never seen before. Surveying the planet found it to be decivilised. I had assumed this was a feature of the mod ?

Oh, vanilla has a possible condition for "orbital solar array", so vanilla generates planets with that condition, and your mod would then place mirrors/shades as appropriate for those planets ?