FreeOrion

Short answer: Add the ship designs / monsters to starting_ship_designs.txt

Long answer: Every ship design has a data field to indicate which empire designed it. This can be accessed while scripting, so that there could be bonuses to any ship an empire designed, even if it's not presently owned by that empire (allowing theft of other empires' designs and such). To make this work, designs that are predefined and that empires start able to build (eg. you don't have to design a Mark I), each empire gets its own variant of those starting ship designs added to their empire's list of known designs at the start of the game. That means that each empire's Mark I is technically an independent design from every other empire's Mark I, distinguished by the designer empire. In order to generate (for example) a Mark I at the start of the game for an empire, there has to exist a design with the proper designer empire. To know which designs to create in that manner, the file starting_ship_designs.txt is used. If there is to be one of those ship generated at the start of the game for empires, there has to be a design entry of that type for the empire, so the design needs to be listed in starting_ship_designs.txt. So, if you try to put a ship in a starting fleet that's not listed in starting_ship_designs.txt, you'll get an error saying that there's no design of that name recorded as being added to that empire, which is what you're seeing.

Also, the list in starting_ship_designs.txt determines which designs do and do not get added to empires to be able to see in their production list at the start of the game. This means that there can be predefined ship designs created, which aren't added to empires' starting production lists. So, empires don't see SD_DRAGON_TOOTH as a producible ship design, since it's not in the list.

The names of the Space Monster Fleets should be visible to all players. The behaviour of monsters can be modified by how they merge and name fleets. This will allow different types of Space Monster to act differently on the galaxy map.

Solar Trees
All the solar trees in each system should merge to form a single fleet. If the system is called 'Hubble' the fleet will be called 'Hubble Forest'.

Drones
The first two Drones at a Drone Factory create a fleet called 'Factory Defence', this fleet never moves. Each drone spawned after this forms a fleet called 'Drone Scout'. This fleet moves a lot, in random directrion. If two 'Drone Scout' Fleets are in the same location, they merge to form 'Attack Drone' fleet. This fleet moves less often than scouts and doesn't move to the Drone Factory system. When 'Attack Drone' fleets meet they merge to form larger fleets of the same name and behaviour. Scout fleets do not merge with attack fleets. This means drone factories will be lightly defended and send out lots of scouts. If they are not killed off they will combine into larger more dangerous fleets, later in the game.

Krill Swarms
These should always merge into combined fleets.

Krakens
The larval Krakens should merge into large fleets, but 'older' types should only merge into pairs. The fleet can be called 'Kraken Couples' or 'Mated Pairs'. They should have a small chance of creating Kraken nests in un-populated systems.

Floaters
These should randomly wander about individually, but have a chance of joining Solar Tree 'Forest' Fleets for a few turns at a time.

Snowflakes
Could join to form fleets called 'Shower', 'Storm' or 'Blizzard' depending how many snowflakes are in them.

Juggernauts
These could be solitary, Any fleet present with other Juggernauts has a 70% chance of randomly moving. If alone they have a small chance of moving.

Sentries & Guardians
These should be in a fleet named after the system the monster spawned in. A very small chance of moving, so if they are found away from the special they are guarding the player can tell that they moved and are not guarding some random system, but came from a special system.


This will make the map galaxy map less cluttered with lots of Monster Fleets and give each monster type a kind of personality. In my current games I often find systems with 5 drone fleets each containing a single drone. This looks quite messy and I have to flip through lots of fleets to see what is there. Other monster types will have other behaviours and the designers of the monsters will obviously want to change everything I just posted, but mainly I want to show how the merging and chance of moving fleets can have a good effect for the feel of the Monsters in the game.

I would like the ability to name monster fleets and combine them into fleets, it is cluttered. Unfortunately i don't think the effects can currently do that. Naming fleets would probably be easiest to implement, and would improve the situation.

However, caution should be exercised in grouping monsters in a fleet because the combined power of that fleet would snowball, and it might be pretty complicated making sensible rules for dividing fleets.

However, i've already solved it for two of the monster types.

* There should only be 1 solar tree per system now. However it's structure increases as time passes, representing the growth of the forest. It should probably be renamed.

* Krill swarms should always merge with other krill swarms forming larger ones, up until they become a krill plague.


If guardian type ships leave their posts, then the "treasure" would be unguarded, which could psychologically cheapen and/or unbalance the more powerful treasures they guard. I'd be more open to this with the lesser treasures guarded by the smaller guardians.


EDIT: Solar Tree -> Dyson Forest:

'''A Dyson Forest is made up of numerous space-born "trees" with filamentous branches. The trees multiply and align themselves in a bubble at the proper distance around their host star. Dyson Forests are a hazard to navigation, and as time passes, the forest expands and becomes harder to erradicate. At intervals they may send out a seed through the star-lanes to colonize other stars.'''

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I would like some Space monsters to affect colonies if they are in a system. They shouldn't all attack ships, but should be attackable.

As an example we could have some kind of telepathic Space Monster, which feeds of the 'energies' of people nearby. If this monster is in a system it would reduce the target health of each colony.The Dyson Trees could reduce Ship Supply of the colonies in the system. I am assuming the hazard to navigation mentioned was that fleets in the system are attacked.

Krill swarms in a system could reduce target mining on all Asteriod colonies. (This could be programmed by modifying Mining Focus to check for presence of Krill Swarms, rather than making the Krill Swarm affect the colony directly.)

Some space monsters could have a detrimental effect on colonies, but be too tough to kill in the earlier stages of the game. If it doesn't attack fleets it could be a nuisance but not stop an Empire from functioning.

None of those things are presently doable with the existing effects, but all could be implemented. Could you give examples of how you'd want to use them, given the basic conditions -> scope -> targets acted on by effects paradigm, possibly including an effect taking a parameter or condition parameter to determine how it functions? Consider whether you want a new effect, or an additional function in an existing effect.
I think I considered something like that, but was unsure how they could be represented in the 3D combat interface. I think that's mostly assuming that ships are located at points, not a star-encircling distributed object.

Multiple Trees in a Forest as Ships in a Fleet would work.I don't know how the program currently works, but I will describe what I beleive should be going on (I don't know how to program).
When a Space Monster is spawned it should be placed into a fleet. The names of the fleets should be what is used to determine what they do. When each type of Space Monsters is spawned they should be placed into a Fleet named with the same name every time. For example Drones can be placed into a fleet called Drone (The name can be something cool, but for my examples I'll keep it simple.).
From now on only the fleets are controlled by the game. The fleets only need to move and/or merge. Removing individual Space Monsters from fleets is probably not needed. The game needs to check each Fleet once per turn and decide if it should merge. Then check each one (hopefully now there are less) and decide if it should move.
We just need to make up a different set of rules for each fleet name. When the fleets merge they could either keep the same name or be renamed, depending on the rules we make up.
Setting up something to allow renaming of fleets by the game would make the game much more fun. It already decides when to move fleets. Merging will definately reduce clutter and can allow different types of Space Monsters to act in different ways. Individual Space Monsters don't need anything to tell them where or when to move, they just need something to place them in a correctly named fleet when they spawn.

I think you may overestimate how much of a grasp on your effects system i have. While i am learning, most of what i've done is accomplished by rote/substitution, with a large measure of trial and error.

But i can describe what i'd want to do with it.
* (#1 request) Name the newly created fleet that the "createship" effect creates. A ton of fleets named "Monsters" isn't very helpful.
* * Renaming an existing fleet could also be useful, especially if we want to try to create very informative labels. The other time i see wanting to rename fleets (besides ship/fleet creation) is when fleets merge. A dragon, fleet name: "Dragon", when joined by a "Kraken", might change their fleet name to "Various Monsters". I'm not sure i'd actually want to put different types of monsters in the same fleet-- just and example.

* When a new ship is created that's a great time to see if there's a fleet to join. Drones would make sense joining the drone factory's fleet.

* When two monsters of compatible types meet i would probably want a way to merge their fleets-- and quite possibly renaming the resultant fleet in the process.

* I'd see a use for occasionally dividing fleets. For instance the drones are generally supposed to stick in the same place, but occasionally wander off. When a drone randomly decides to wander it would need to divide from the fleet


* How do we decide "who drives" a fleet? Would that question be simpler if we decided that monster fleets could only be made up of the same type of monster?

* Or do we decide that any monsters of the same type in the same system automatically get put in the same virtual fleet. These fleets might just simply be a way of displaying ships that happen to be in the same place. They aren't bound to move together, if their random movements don't coincide (which they usually wouldn't).

Does that help?


Good point. No good target to click on.

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That's mostly what I'm after...
That should be easily doable, with an optional parameter to specify a fleet name from the stringtable.
This would require a new effect, and some thought about how to select fleets to join other fleets... It's not immediately clear whether an effect would act on the fleet and have a subcondition to select ships to add, or act on ships and have a subcondition or parameter to specify what fleet to add them to. If the latter, having the same effectsgroup rename a fleet that has ships added would not really work.
What criteria or conditions would be useful for deciding whether and what fleet to add a new ship to?
Figuring out how best to code such an effect is a bit tricky...
Scope conditions could be used to pick which type of monster acts on a fleet with multiple types. Add to the scope of a less-dominant monster an And-ed condition that the target fleet not contain one of the more-dominant monster types.

OllyG is pretty close to the mark. Location (obviously ) and ship type mostly i think. The amount of fuel could be relevant (an actively mobile fleet may want to avoid adding ships that have no fuel -- and eject members that run out of fuel. Maybe the number of ships/monsters already in the fleet would be a useful criteria. Possibly speed, but that would only matter if we were potentially stacking a bunch of monsters together and wanted avoid adding monsters that would slow the fleet down.


Scope could choose between different monster types, but what about multiple monsters of the same type? Or does that matter? The last one to be evaluated is the one whose movement decision sticks?

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It would be the last one, unless you used a stacking group, in which case it would be the first one whose effects are evaluated.

The Psychic Domination tech can give players control monsters, including Krill (or other empires' ships).

Well, we can limit that, right?
I'm not sure we want a tech to circumvent the guardian of a Gaian world -- certainly not Precursor Armadas (if we put those in) and there's the weirdness of "controlling" a non-thinking entity like a Dyson forest.

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Maybe a Dyson Forest should be an outpost (localized on star orbit, not on any system body)? Or maybe it could even could be a system body that can have an outpost for mining/research purposes?

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[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - xkcd

I was thinking about new kinds of space monsters, and thought that a monster that would change the type of a planet (as someone suggested) was pretty cool. It would be imbalanced if it made them into habitable planets, but it could turn them into asteroids so that no species benefits over another. Since it would make asteroids, it could be a krill symbiont that eats planets and grinds them to dust "in the story".

I would try making something like that for myself to test it out, but I have no idea which files I would need to edit for making a space monster. Any help?

Start with ship_hulls.txt and ship_parts.txt for the components, space_monsters.txt to put them together, and space_monster_spawn_fleets.txt to make them actually appear. All are in the default directory.