FreeOrion

Currently the "Cultural Archives" activates all the effects that have to do with being a species Homeworld.

But then i noticed in the effects that homeworld are mentioned briefly:


My understanding is that this only counts as homeworlds the origin of imperial/playable species. Is that correct?

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I think it should match planets on which player-controlled empires start the game. I'm not sure whether it would match planets on which playable species start if they start as natives, though I suspect it would not. It won't match planest on which non-playable species start. Some of this could be changed, if desired, though.

There is a need to select against just imperial homeworlds/capitols (currently for use in placing specials).

The current set-up don't look like it would keep me from doing anything i can foresee wanting to do.

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I don't remember all the motivation for having "Cultural Archives" as well as separately-tracking homeworlds (may be more than one) for each species, but I think the plan was for the cultural archives to have a few things that wouldn't fit as homeworld stuff, and not for the homeworld test to be completely redundant if archives are present. At the least, the archives could be destroyed, since it's a building, while homeworld status should always be retained, and is tracked per-species, not per planet. Notably, if you repopulated a planet with its old cultural archives intact, any species would get its bonuses, while homeworld-condition-dependent bonuses can be made to work only for species for which a planet actually is a homeworld.

I just remembered, there is an issue with the current implementation if we want to make native homeworlds significant-- The italic star-name type--which is supposed to indicate a homeworld-- is absent.


Couldn't non-homeworld stuff be plausibly rolled into the imperial palace?

And since it is likely that a given minor or imperial/playable species will appear in a larger galaxy more than once (until we produce a sufficiently astronomical number of different species), it's likely that some species will have multiple homeworlds. I don't have a problem with that-- or more accurately i think any attempt to "fix" it would create a bigger problem. We can vaguely hint that some precursor is behind a species having multiple "homeworlds".


I agree.

I had thought the cultural archives could be destroyed if population drops to zero (presumably a necessary precursor to a new species inhabiting the planet), but that wouldn't allow the species to take back the planet are regain the "homeworld" benefits. So that's not a very good way to simulate "homeworldness"


P.S. The universe tables say on "High" there should be a native species per every 4 stars. But since species are allocated per planet, not per star, does that mean that on "high" ~ 25% of planets should have a native? I'm wondering what exactly it would take to put a unique species on each native world with max settings.

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Imperial Palaces and presumably be moved, whereas you can't build cultural archives.
That probability test is per planet, not per star. It means that 75% (or whatever is 1 - native_chance), the game skips the planet without attempting to add a species. If a planet does pass the chance test, then it finds all suitable species (good environment) for the planet and randomly picks one. If no species are suitable for the planet, it should skip the planet.
Probably change the NativeFreq table entry for High to 1 (from 4). native_chance = 1/NativeFreq

Yeah. I just can't think of any bonus that couldn't/shouldn't be attached to the homeworld, or the palace. If there are some, i don't really have a problem with having a homeworld (perhaps as a special) and an archive building.


Heh, i meant fair and square without decreasing the number of natives.

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I actually misread what you want, but you also may not have understood the implications of my reply...

Changing High to 1 from 4 would increase the chance of getting natives on each planet to 100% (when a suitable native is available).

If you wanted to guarantee that a 500 star galaxy with max planets (could be up to 10 per system, I think?) had a native on each, you'd need just less than 5000 native species, and you'd have to give them all a location condition that says there are no other planets with that species on it within *LARGE_NUMBER* distance (big enough to cover all planets in the galaxy, to ensure no duplicates can appear very far apart). Running all these tests would be very slow. This condition is required since there is no spawn limit property for species (unlike specials... or was it monster fleets?... Something had them...).

If, as some people have requested, galaxies had much more than 500 stars, having enough native species would require more species. Perhaps an autogeneration mechanism for species creation would be required...
Edit...Looking at the commit logs, the original motivation for the Cultural Archives was to replace the homeworld special. The commit log says something about this making more sense...

There's not much set criteria for what goes in archives vs. palace vs. homeworlds anyway, so it's probably not a big deal to remove the archives.

I'm just concerned with the number of graphics i'll have to make, not how to script it-- yet. Since about 10% of the galaxy is probably uninhabitable Gas giants or asteroids, and 1 out of 4 planets with natives is IMHO sufficient, if not excessive, so i'll round it off and say I'll want to eventually have 1000 unique icons.
Or 8 times the current number.
Or practically speaking, lots, lots more.

Since most professional space 4X games have a smaller (often much smaller) max number of planets, i'm not concerned with the possibility that we'll need larger galaxies.

However, I like the idea of randomly generated species, not only because it means less work, but because it means infinite variety. And that IMHO is what galactic exploration should be about.


Perhaps because it would make more sense that a captured Cultural Archives would confer advantages to invaders.


Moving forward, do you think it it feasible to script (or add scripting support for) a special or building that only works for a specific species, without going the brute-force method and writing up a unique special or building for each species?

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It's not clear exactly what you mean, but would it not be sufficient to have a building only work when the planet it is on is the homeworld of the species that is on it? You should be able to do that already...

revision 4861
"Adjusted specials to avoid appearing at Capitals instead of Homeworlds. Makes no difference now, but it will if/when 'homeworld' status is granted to native planets. Also removed mostly pointless specials from Gas Giants."

Until just now, i hadn't realized there were capital AND homeworld conditions.


Yeah, that's what i want.
I haven't the faintest idea of how that could be scripted.

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You should be able to pass Source.Planet.Species as the Homeworld condition's species parameter. So just "Homeworld species = Source.Planet.Species" as scope condition for an effectsgroup on the building. Maybe throw an ContainedBy around that (maybe Anded with Planet) if you want to match the building itself, such as for an activation condition.

No...

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Using

as specified in the wiki seems to work fine.

As usual, just leaving out the name of the parameter works fine too.

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Are you sure that's what you used?
Doesn't work for me, binary from 4852

Feel free to skip the scripting lesson, and just commit something that works.

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