From the forums/discussions, I've had two modding ideas. The trouble is, I can't tell how to get either of them to work properly.
1. Research module on ships.
Initially I had the idea that ships could have ranged-based research bonuses - not unlike Starbases. They could provide small flat or % bonuses to nearby colonies, or even having to be stationed at one to affect it. This allows people to give a head-start to colonies - put them in a fleet with a colony ship to make the initial build-up easier, or simply to have them stationed around your capitals for extra boosts.
Ignoring range for now, the obvious problem is how to get them to affect research.
One way to do this:
[code]
<Stats>
<EffectType>Research</EffectType>
<Target>
<TargetType>Faction</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
<Value>10</Value>
</Stats>
[/code]
It works, but it affects research as a whole. Not necessarily a bad idea, but not the one I'm after. So what I want to use instead is:
<TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
But what colony is this? Well, it's Local scope by default. I can change it to Global - surely that would affect all colonies, which would be a start. But it doesn't. IE, non-working code is:
[code]
<Stats>
<EffectType>Research</EffectType>
<Scope>Global</Scope>
<Target>
<TargetType>Colony</TargetType>
</Target>
<BonusType>Flat</BonusType>
<Value>10</Value>
</Stats>
[/code]
This leads onto my 2nd idea
2. Faction-wide Pacing
Some people are fine with pacing affecting colony base research, but some people want a bit more. I though that if, instead of -50% base research, which is unnoticeable when you have +1000% from research facilities and capitals, you could have -50% total research.
The obvious thing here is to change it from Colony to Faction. Scope Local wouldn't make sense, as... what is a Local scope for a game setting? So we leave it as Global - it worked for Colony pacing, so why not globally affect all factions? Nope - didn't work. Why is it that I can affect my research faction-wide from a ship, but not from Pacing? Using exactly the same code? And why can I globally affect all colonies from Pacing, but not from a ship. What subtleties do Scope and TargetType hold that makes this not work?
Returning to 1.
Faction with default Scope (Local) seemed to work, so would Global and Faction affect all Factions?
Turns out, it doesn't. Global Factions seems not to include Local. That makes my head hurt.
I've even tried TargetRelationTypes set to Any, but that doesn't work either. The default is Self, so if I want it to affect others surely I'd set it to Any.
Once I get this figured out (hopefully thanks to helpful comments), I might then have an issue getting range-limits working. I know there's a RangeMax tag, but... time will tell.
TL;DR: Important issue in bold.
PS:
You might want to make the [ code="xml" ] actually readable. You can barely see wha's inside the tags without highlighting.
Code: xml
- <Clear>Hard to see </Clear>