I noticed this too. In fact there's a Lot of things that just don't seem to be hooked up or just flat out don't work. I'm not sure why either but it doesn't make much sense to me to have settings in the XML that don't change anything (at least not anything noticeable). This makes it a lot harder (for me at least) to know what's worth changing and what isn't. Especially when we try to change something expecting it to have a certain result and then nothing happens.
Thanks, Raven. And this is EXACTLY why I am doing this. Without Stardock's input, and us chomping at the bit to mod the game, it is very difficult to implement anything without pulling out some hair (fortunately for me, I shave my dome). Pooling our resources (ugh, sorry) together should help alleviate these struggles.
In time, it would be worthwhile to have nice, clean templates of these objects so we can just plug them in and fill them out as needed.
Dhuran and I also noticed there seems to be a lot of UN-Necessary steps when trying to Mod even simple things. Some things appear to be split up in the XML for no other reason than to have them split up when they could be condensed into one XML file. Some things seem to take way too many steps to accomplish when in other games that support XML editing don't require as many different references or steps to get a job done.
I noticed this as well. I think I am going to attack this much differently than Stardock. My intention is to have an XML file for each resource, improvement type, etc. Essentially, each object "grouping" in the game. So when I implement my clay and ceramic bits resources, quarry, kiln, and mint improvements, they will be kept in independant files.
- SL_Resource_Clay.xml
- SL_Resource_Ceramic_Bits.xml
- SL_Improvement_Clay_Quarry.xml
- SL_Improvement_Kiln.xml
- SL_Improvement_Mint.xml
I (as well as you and everyone else) will know exactly what is contained within and the notes at the top of the file will describe the relationships. If I ever have to adjust the output of the kiln for each race/faction, I know exactly where to go, and I don't need to open a dozen files to do so.