More Awesome Than You!

I have a shiny find that I figured some of you boys might enjoy.

http://spore.vg/

For the linkphobes:

# 42 - Changes the Staff Of Life so that it never uses any charges and reduces its cooldown to 10 seconds.
# Asymmetry Hack - Disables symmetry in all editors.
# Space Is Fun Hack - Increases the minimum time required between attacks, raids, and disasters to from 15 minutes to 2 hours. Oh, and it ups the maximum artifacts per planet to 8. Lite version (same thing but without the artifact change).

Note that the Asymmetry hack apparently has some issues, so it's in beta. It can't be toggled, so everything would be asymmetrical. It also confuses the complexity meter, so you'll have to turn it off in cheats. (And uploading stuff that's overcomplex doesn't work, for those of you who use the Sporepedia.)

Do post your own Spore mods if/when you find any.

Does .png sharing still work for them?

For people who have complexity turned off, yes. The problem with uploading them to the Sporepedia is that it sees that the creatures are cheated and doesn't want to imbalance someone's game with them.

I can't get the complexity cheat to work. It keeps telling me "blah blah blah can't be used in this mode". Is it only usable in the creator outside of actual gameplay? Because that's not cool.

Ummm, one minute.

*shuffle*

Apparently, you have to use it in the Create creature creator, not the ingame ones. It SEEMS like it should apply to ingame ones after invoked in the creator. Opinion is a bit divided on that.

The guy is still working on a way to get around the toggle-ableness and the complexity meter.

Loveliness. I keep butting heads with the complexity limits. They seem way too low to me.

I've always assumed the Complexity Meter was the game's way of saying "you're gonna make me lock up if I have to animate that."  Ergo removing it was sort of like removing your car brakes.

I rarely run into the creature complexity limit, but the vehicle limit has been something of a bane for me.  For spaceships anyway.

 - Gus

That would make sense. In the same way that the console versions of The Sims have a limit on how many objects can be placed (otherwise the game will BFBVFS) I guess. Although, I'm guessing the cheat is more of a "use at own risk" thing than a "will definitely asplode" type of thing.

Thanks for the link, Im looking for a mod that will keep the dam Terra Score up on freaking planets I CAN NOT for the life of me figure it out and can never seem to get it perfect does anyone know if one exists?

I think it has more to do with how much data can be compressed into the .png file for the creature.

Terra Scores do not decrease unless you overuse a terraforming tool. They normally stay where you put them, assuming that you first terraform it with the tools, then stabilize the results with the insertion of plants and animals....something you have to do in order for the terraforming to be of any USE!

When I place a colony  on a new planet and go to build/add buldings, houses or whatever it says the Terra Scroe is to low and the buttons are disabled I have tried placing animals and plants and the dam animals die within a few seconds(lol) so am I missing something?
I know your suppose to try and get the little dot-thing to the center by useing the tools,lower atmospher or raise the tempature but it NEVER works for me and never goes in the center so what are you suupose to do to make it "perfect"

Buy atmosphere generator/vacuum to adjust the vertical axis (atmosphere), then ice storm or meteor shower for the horizontal axis (temperature). Throw at planet.

Movement of dot towards centre is indicated by white < < < marks.

If doing it once doesn't work, get more, throw at planet till you get T1/2/3.

Then add your plants.

First off, you're retarded.  Second off, follow the fucking food web.

I, too, decided to  avoid terraforming until I've got the energy-for-effect Teraforming tools. Attempting to do it before then is like trying to build a paper crane with a leaf blower and a sledgehammer.

Cloud Vacuum and Cloud Accumulator require the Terra Wrangler 2 or Empire 2 Badge.
Heat ray and Refrigeration Ray require the Terra Wrangler 3 or Empire 3 Badge.

The way I've gone so far has been the Empire badge, as  I've instituted a policy of "If you declare war on me, You no longer deserve to have an empire."

That is a good policy.

Going the Empire route for them tends to require that you be good at piloting a rather crappy ship, since effective war requires a minimum of at least one or two health upgrades and a minibomb.

Eh, the one-shot tools aren't that expensive, and the return on terraforming a good spice world is huge.  If you only use one, you're adding about $90K to the cost of adding a city.  The Incredi Pak costs $90K, and the factories and houses you buy are $100K-$300K, roughly, depending on which stage you're doing.  So a 30% increase in cost isn't that big a deal, and putting off your initial stream of income is going to hold you back much more.

 - Gus

Also, if you haven't completed the Terraforming quest yet then you can "accidentally" use the Atmospheric Generator they give you on another planet to improve it instead.  Then go back to your homeworld, say that you need another one, and you'll get another one for 1,000 Sporebucks.  However, if you purchase the one shots by trading then you can get Terra Wrangler faster since you can choose the tool which corresponds to how you need to Terraform the planet.

It's still cheaper than if you created colonies to get the Empire 2 badge anyway.

Some of my allies sell colony packs for $75k. However, I just gained five more planets (most T2, one T3) because one empire suddenly decided it hated me. No idea why, but whatever. I now have their base, and two of their other systems I "gave" to another empire they had always been attacking. I'm now hitting cargo limits when doing spice pick-up runs on my systems (yellow, but still).

No, using the atmospheric generator is faster (and cheaper!). While you might be limited in what you can terraform, most planets in the "green" zone only need to be atmosphered up or down, (50/50 chance, roughly), so you can USUALLY wrangle a point out of that. Keep in mind that the cheapest I've seen one of the one-shot tools go for is 75K. At that low, low price, you could Atmospheric Generator 75 planets! I use ONLY the atmospheric generator to get Wrangler 3. Once you have wrangler 3, you have access to all 4 of the cardinal directional tools. You don't get the diagonal tools until 4 and 5, but you don't need them, they're just luxury items. Any planet can be terraformed using only the down/up/left/right tools. It'll cost more energy, but energy is free.

After thinking a lot about how bad is the Planetary Bazaar system provided with Spore, where you need to jump between 3 planet bazaars to buy 3 colony packs or stuff like that. I've created a new hack that ups the quantity for almost all items available at planetary bazaars from 1 or 2 to 99. Attached is the zip file containing the package.

Enjoy,

ETA: Tested with Spore patch 1.1.0.358. Removed 25 property files which are not required, as it overrides several non single shot tools. Attached is new and updated package.

Regards,
Karthik

How did you manage that? More details, please!

Dammit. I could have used that. I just equipped 30+ planets with uberturrets and you know not everyone sells those.

I made the mods using Rick's beta tools for Spore. It was a bit of work requiring me to change the QuantityToOffer tag in the .prop file in Group ID: 0x034D97FA, and some 25 files. Then compiled the decompiled prop.xml(s) back to prop and package them.

Sorry, It took me a while in my quest to find where the Quantity on sale for each equipments are defined. So, as soon as I got the necessary details, I made this hack.

I hope every welcomes the hack and enjoys Spore more. Happy Sporing.

Regards,
Karthik

Adding one more mod, people might think this as a cheat mod though. Reduces the recharge rate of all Archetype powers in Space Stage to 10 Second. Also removes the Relationship score damage when using Zealot or Scientist super powers. Tested with Spore version 1.1.0.358.

Please report if any problem occurs.

Enjoy,

ETA: If you have downloaded the SuperPowers.package, please rename it, prefixing an a to the name. So the mod will be loaded before the main game package will be loaded.

Regards,
Karthik

http://www.xspore.com/community/modding/10364-release-facepunch-spore-mods-megathread.html
More mods!

Maybe I'm thread-crapping here, but looking over that link, there wasn't a single mod I wanted to install, ever.  The problem is that every single one of them makes the game easier.  I don't need easier at this point.  I want mods that make the game harder, rather like Pescado's No $20K Handout mod.

For example, it'd be nice if terraforming the hot / cold planets was tougher.  As it stands, I only really care about spice color.  Who cares if the Purple planet is a hellhole with a surface temperature that would melt lead?  I'll dump an ice storm on it, maybe two at most, and then it's just like every T1 in a Green orbit.  $240K in income a minute, here I come!

Of course, a real fix for that would involve a re-design.  Like, put limits on what the terraforming tools can do, and unlock more advanced tools with higher badges.  So instead of the redundant diagonal tools, say that Ice Storms can only cool down planets one level, and you need an advanced tools to cool down 2 or 3 levels.

I'd probably dump the "free" tools that only cost energy entirely.

 - Gus

I'd like something to make empires consist of a higher ratio of T2s and T3s. T1s and T0s are a joke, even with the mini-nothing bomb. With the mega bomb I'm in and out in 5 seconds.

Sculptist's Dream looks good. I hate sitting there waiting for tools to recharge.

That's true, the AI is remarkably stupid about empire building.  It appears to just mark something as "colonized" without terraforming it in any way.  So they end up with loads of red / blue orbit planets that are T0's and produce nothing.

Sometimes they don't even colonize the best planet in a system.

 - Gus

They will terraform the planet slowly over time. I've seen them set up shop on a T0 and have it turn into a T2. I've also seen them crash their ecology and turn a T3 into a T0. :P

And all the while, they whine at you to do something about it.  It would be interesting to find out whether these ecology collapses start happening when you begin an alliance with them, or they happen randomly to any empire while the game is running.

They seem to happen to everyone, but if you aren't allied, they don't expect you to help. This is why the AI tends to wind up with an empire of T0s: The ecology on all his planets collapses and he's too dumb to do anything about it despite having bajillions of ships that you don't. I don't even see why they bother to ask YOU to defend their planets, honestly, considering that anytime I arrive, there are like 80 ships there and my presence is totally superfluous.

Because their ships don't do a dang thing. Just like when they cry that so-and-so is attacking them. They seem to always lose if you don't defend them (and I don't...in the games where I'm allying with people, I'm allying with everyone, so the attacker is also an ally).

I like the ally eco disasters until I have the badges I want. Keeps them happy and gets me my shinies faster.

I've never really seen them lose in a fight specifically because I didn't intervene. There are only a few fights where my intervention makes or breaks the deal, and many more where my intervention appears to be entirely counterproductive, as forcing the combat abstraction into the concrete results in them losing faster regardless of what I do.

I've seen it a couple of times now, but only because it was a weak empire being mashed by a bigger one, and I was pretty powerful.  Despite the tendency to sneer at your tag-alongs, if you've got 3-4 really strong ones they do add a lot of firepower.  The enemy typically comes in groups very like yours: one central strong ship armed with missiles and bombs, and 4 small escorts armed with beams.  When I'm by myself, I have to do some kiting to deal with the escorts one at a time.  If I've got a strong escort of my own, the enemy escorts are generally dead before I have a chance to target more than one. 

If you keep your fleet repaired, it's not hard to defeat an invading fleet without much assistance from the natives.  AoE repairs are very cheap.  The main thing is having escorts that are strong enough to survive 1-2 encounters before you need to repair them.

 - Gus

For some reason the empires I meet are either huge conglomerates of more than 10 systems or tiny nothings of 3 systems. I've watched empires be swallowed from the sidelines.

Another mod for removing the restriction on travel range when getting nearer to galactic core. This fools the game into thinking, there is no set definition for galactic core start boundary. Tested with Spore version 1.1.0.338.

Should make it easier for all of you wanting to enter the core without getting killed by the Grox.

Regards,
Karthik

Here's a cool thing I discovered: The Pulse weapons CAN be fired at enemy ships. While their range is terrible and their accuracy is worse, the Megapulse does 450 damage a hit, easily enough to toast many escorts in one or two shots. The drawback being that you have to let them swarm you, but they won't get off many shots before you incinerate them, as their shark-circle range is within point-blank shot range for the pulse. When you consider that the Megamissile does a mere 120 damage and costs a hell of a lot more, 450 a pulse shot + AOE is a bargain! I use it as my main ship-to-ship weapon now, it is reminiscent of the Fusion Cannon on the Ur-Quan I'm flying around in.

I originally used pulse weapons on turrets and discovered their virtues against ships because I fail at weapon switching. Same thing with megabombs.

Megabombs will one-shot practically any ship in the game, but it's nearly impossible to actually hit anyone with one except by accident, since it cannot be aimed at ships specifically, which the pulse can be.

I discovered that by accident recently, too -- I like the pulse cannon for taking out turrets, as one or two shots do the trick.  I was attacking a city with the plus when one of the planet-side defenders came by, and I forgot to switch to a different weapon.  Between my allies and the pulse, he was gone in no time.

I've since used it a lot against slow moving targets too, like bombers and the Grox.

I think the Mega Laser is still better for picking off fleeing ships and those bombers. They tend to be running away from you so the pulse often misses.

Yeah, I was attacking a city when a defense ship (one of the tough ones with 900+ hp) flew up. I forgot to switch weapons and ended up blasting it with the pulse.

I usually go after the attacking ships, coming up from behind and getting right on top of them before firing.  My allies take care of the escort while I take out the bomber.  Fun, fun, fun! :)

Space is the all around best part of the game - except, unlike the other stages, it gets dull quick because the best part gets repetitive. I'm glad the EP will expand on that - making the ending more 'expansive' so that you can do more with your ship.

Unless you have a mission to do so, there is no reason why you would ever want to destroy your own turrets! Why are you doing that? Each destroyed turret costs you $16K and does nothing to help you invade the planet.

Maybe he just really hates himself...

I don't take out the turrets if I'm going to enslave the planet, but most of the time I wipe out the single-colony worlds when I'm ridding the galaxy of an annoying empire, so it doesn't matter if I wipe out the turrets first.  The only time I don't is if they're a pink or purple spice planet, but the one-colony ones are rarely better than gold.

Wiping out the turrets has no useful effect on taking out the colony, though. Bombs wasted on turrets are not hitting the colony itself. Bombs are not exactly high-precision instruments, anyway, and if you have the GOOD bombs, wimpy lesser colonies can be neutralized in a single megabomb, anyway. The turrets are much more difficult to destroy and attacking them is a waste of time.

I don't attack the turrets with bombs; I use the pulse cannon.  One or two shots takes an annoying turret out, and then a megabomb or two mops up.

In the time it takes to FIRE those two pulses, you could have just hit the colony with a megabomb. One bomb is all it takes to defeat a non-level3 colony, generally.

True, but I like to blow things up in bits and pieces sometimes -- keeps me interested. :)