Modding

[UesugiKenshin]

Artistically this Fibbonaci Sequnce in say Tool's Lateralis is why it's so compelling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qRgsudBsGA&app=desktop

Look at an analysis of aesthetics as compared and contrasted with facial symmetry.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cv4iIl1kU4I

All of which then plays a role in the depiction of romance and relationships within a science fiction milieu.

[UesugiKenshin]

Star Trek frequently used sentient extraterrestrials within episodes to depict what is and what isn't beautiful, then demonstrated the gamut of ways aliens might use telepathy to approximate human beauty standards to be diplomatic or even to express courtship and love.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B77HcISuuE4
Star Trek TOS Metamorphosis

The Companion is a gaseous cloud including energy fluxtuations, who comes to care for Zephram Cochrane who is stranded on a planet. So what begins as altruism, turns into friendship, and then intimacy.

Similarly in Star Trek Enterprise, an extraterrestrial takes the appearance of Captain Archer's imagined experience on the nymph from Yeats' poem when in fact, she truly looks like a larger than human sized slug.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HvG-GjHt8po

[UesugiKenshin]

Fully fleshed out stories incite resonnance in the reader so they care about the characters and what they as "heroes and heroines" do as activities as milestones on their journeys.

Otherwise it's just mechanical and has no meaning and ultimately players tire of just another 4X space game.

If you ignore this in modding, then the story is not compelling. The characters are flat no matter how interesting the characteristics of minor and major races. What's important is what happens when they meet and how they develop relationships which wax and wane, inspire antipathy and hatred, or increasing trust, friendship, and even romance.

[UesugiKenshin]

http://bote2.square7.ch/en/wiki/Test1

The Pambuka developed in the rich, dense, almost water-like atmosphere of a large planet. They feed mainly on the constant filtering of this atmosphere and loathe and avoid foreign animals. The entire body of a pambuka consists of multilayered, closable membranes and antenna-like sensors that protrude from the body in all directions. These sensors capture the atomic vibrations of their surroundings and map them to an internal retina using the full membrane body. The Pambuka can only move very slowly in the atmosphere of their home planet, which is why they have developed the ability to detect living things at a greater distance. They are so sensitive to certain well-known vibrations that they can perceive larger clusters of them even a few light minutes away as soon as they are outside of their home planet's impenetrable atmosphere. They have the additional ability to secrete ultra-high-frequency shock waves that easily bring down titanium walls and tear other living things to pieces even further away, but they do this themselves, which is why a normal Pambukas does so only with the greatest fear of death.

Home system: Pambuka

Technological progress: progressive

Special ability: secret service

Bribery: medium bribery

Spaceman nation: no

Special building: Wave pattern recognition training : +50% internal security Pambuka death squadron : + 25 % economic, research and military sabotage

The Pambuka are an insectoid race who are very slow to trust anyone else, but will eventually and since so radically different and non-humanoid, then far more difficult to appeal to players.

Whereas the Wollonen are parodied as little more than lovely but vapid beauty salespersons.

The Wollons are a strolling people. Always concerned with themselves and the purity of their skin, everything revolves around beauty and how you can "create" it. The nude baths are particularly popular, whether alone or in pairs, they always offer the necessary relaxation and, according to the local experts, ensure the optimal complexion. The Wollons sell their products to the whole known world and are not averse to races that do not share their passion so much. They in turn are submissive servants and supply them with everything they consider "beautiful", including weapons. Despite their obvious vanity, there are a few clever minds in their ranks who can have great experience in the field. Wollons are also popular as representatives of simple peaceful diplomatic missions by their allies because they are very good at adapting and "smoothing" a wide variety of interests.

Home system: Wollon

Technological progress: normal

Special ability: pacifist

Bribery: medium bribery

Spaceman nation: no

Special building: Wollonen representative: +1 morale across the empire, +75% credit bonuses.

Look at the pictures at the link to get a better idea.

It's shallow but we judge people based on their appearances.

[UesugiKenshin]

In Star Trek TOS "Is There in Truth No Beauty", the young and breathtaking Diana Muldaur is a blind diplomat assigned to assist the Medusans as their appearance is so startling that they induce madness.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=10w5u9NMZFI

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_L5SwqVkbNY
Aesthetics, phi, and human anatomy.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o2AsIXSh2xo
This theme of extraterrestrial appearance and madness then shows up again in Bird Box (2018). It also demonstrates that just because extraterrestrials visit the Earth, that they might not communicate, nor even realize we are sentient, or even care.

One has to suppose that the visitors know the chaos that happens upon species being exposed to them, but perhaps that phenomena is inconsequential or it could be a weapon for colonization.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FFGm__skOH4
The Thing (2011 prequel)
The Thing doesn't care about billateral symmetry or even about order as it is most seen in chaotic forms. So John Carpenter and later Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. are using these artistic elements to provoke extreme dread, fear, horror, and revulsion.

The Thing as a species doesn't care what you think. It cares about extermination which is an attribute of several warrior species and some non-space faring species as well in BotE.

It apparrently has the ability like a hologram to recreate its entire self from the smallest segment or even a molecule and can use whatever species it came in contact with to adapt a useful predatory response.

[UesugiKenshin]

http://bote2.square7.ch/en/wiki/Test1

At some point, you will encounter the Zhordanians.

The Zhordanians were once an up-and-coming, intelligent race, which, thanks to a high level of research in the field of weapon and mechanoid technology, seized dominance on Zhordan. They developed increasingly lethal weapons and, in senseless experiments, destroyed almost all living things on Zhordan. An unsuccessful experiment with a weapon that was supposed to destroy the vegetation in small areas, but to spare living beings, caused a chain reaction that destroyed the entire vegetation of the planet. Only a few survived this disaster in deep, underground bunkers. Little by little, the Zhordanians tried to get back to the contaminated surface and invented a kind of mechanical suit, in which they could withstand the heat now with the appropriate armor. How the Zhordans look without their suit can only be estimated from old records. What is certain is that they regress from the upright being and lose more and more of their physical properties.

Home system: Zhordan

Technological progress: progressive

Special ability: none

Bribery: difficult to bribe

Spaceman nation: yes own ships

Special building: research bunker : +40% biogenetics, +40% weapon technology

The minor race database doesn't say this, but they have a magnificent fleet of battleships and heavy destroyers and they are fairly easy to get along with. Eventually they will become members and so you will owe them a tremendous debt.

Meanwhile their people are crippled and living in exoskeletons. It seems to me the natural modding response is they deserve some mechanism through the techtree to escape their prisons and live normal lives. This is easily done by a series of tech upgrades involving rehabilitation to restore the effects of living within an exoskeleton and normalization of their lives in stages and involving recovery of their planets in their system. They are already terraformed but would involve techupgrades to restore the plant life and environment and their intricate prior ecosystems.

It's the right thing to do after the expense and the struggle. It's a compelling storyline and regardless of major race involvement, they should some way to remedy their situation.

I think a series of cultural upgrades like helping the Zhordanians would be a part of the scoring system and appeal to a whole niche of players particularly sandbox players. It would be a cultural victory just as Civ3 has involving wonder building.

A good writer would explain the transtion is stages, and I would bet most players would not only want to do this, but enjoy the writing and enjoy the process despite it having nothing whatsoever to do with waging war. When they become members, then you can easily gain experience with them through special buildings, and now you have a powerful fleet for whatever purposes. That includes exploration.

[UesugiKenshin]

Similarly the Chewark have an interesting story and though your weak scout or frigate enters their system, they are unlikely to attack a vessel set to "avoid", just will interdict it.

.The Chewark are long, determined researchers and explorers. Your society is designed for command structures and strict compliance with them. They are fascinated by natural phenomena and naturally occurring order structures in the universe and produce brilliant engineers and fleet captains. Your physique and psyche is slightly different from ours. Stress and loud commands increase their ability to think instead of just stupid commands. A Chewark only really begins to think when it is practically shouted at. This is usually very confusing for outsiders and is often misinterpreted as barbaric. On the contrary, death is on barbarism and warlike action in Chewark. Without the necessary background noise, however, you can hardly enjoy the Chewark. The average intellect of the population is impressive. In the past, the Chewark discovered rowwise deritium in their system, which they used for a large number of shipbuilding experiments. Your shipyards are the fastest of the quadrant.

Home system: Chewark

Technological progress: progressive

Special ability: none

Bribery: medium bribery

Spaceman nation: own ships

Special building: Deritium mining license: +4 Deritium Chewark shipyards: 150% ship value Building speed , max. Ship size: huge, +40% shipbuilding

They are a fascinating species whose soldiers expect to have orders barked at them, and have the fast ships. The players should be encouraged to do something to help them...if they so desire, as gaining their vessels will help the player tremendously.

[UesugiKenshin]

The background story of the major and the minor races is so vivid and creatively laid out that it's a huge error not to do more with this through events and random events and diplomacy and buildings and the techtree.

Many of these minor races would likely become arms merchants in all honesty and sell them at huge profits.

[UesugiKenshin]

Moved

[UesugiKenshin]

It seems like our best option for modding on the Android platform is to decrypt the save game methodology. The standard way is to look at the ASCII values say like the term "Credits" or a ship like "Aleph" or "Exocren" and then see what that is in Hex, then do a search, yet this fails to uncover anything within the save game file. It's puzzling.

If we understood what various hexidecimal values were required, even though it would be a roundabout method, then we could do presets of how many credits, what level of the map was uncovered, what technology had been researched,what planets were owned and terraformed within systems, who were already members, and so on and per all the configured major races on a particular map.

It's probably our best option rather than altering data and repacking an APK as that will constantly cause issues for players trying to load an altered APK that did not directly come from the Google Play store app.

I encourage anyone and everyone to try to scrutinize their save game files by exporting them to a special folder, and looking through the hex addresses to discern the save game format.

[UesugiKenshin]

Otherwise, if there were a hidden menu within say the research database that a modder could access, then that would be a fine way to hide standard modding so players would not find them and accidentally alter their original game settings.

Then one would save their game, go to the research database hidden menu, and then unlock various aspects for all the major races in that particular game, then save those settings.

Allowing both a hidden modding menu and if we understood the save game methodolgy, we probaby could accomplish everything except add new levels of tech and new species, but could alter what already exists in game.

[UesugiKenshin]

Ideally in modding, one can access the relationships between the minor and major races ie their demeanor or attitude toward one another and existing levels of trade or friendship and credits earned, and thus preset even that level of detail. Otherwise these aspects take hundreds of turns.

Then players would play scenarios by loading savegames to rapidly enter turn #470 when they have explored 25% of a giant map, have already met many minor and major races, and have existing infrastructure and a thriving economy with some degree of troops and vessels and adequate credits.

Not every player desires to start from scratch in turn #1 and do all of that.