Yes a terror star's speed is hardcoded.

I guess that makes sense.. Thanks Cari..

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Darn... I was just hope'n it was a big secret nobody wanted to let out yet... I guess the "Ability Economics" and similar is also hard coded at 10% in the tech data file (it can't be set to, say, 30%)?

If you are speaking about the pick at the beginning of a game, it is the english.str file.
And don't forget that any change you made are available to the AI ...
BTW, increasing economics too much isn't really important since there are some limitations about the revenues from a planet

No, no, err, my saying "Economic" was purely a random choice on my part. What I'd like to be able to do is have tech break-thru protocall in the tech file that would permit yielding greater than 10% when certain ablities are called, even the possiblity to go negative. As I understand it, negative, say Speed, isn't possible within the tech file; and ability calls only yield a 10% change (positive).
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Why do you want some techs with a negative effects?
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Negative, say industrial break-thrus or cultural tech break-thrus by a race which isn't concerned about PQ... as I've decided to apply to the "Borg," in my particular instance. Some tech research paths could be set to give a benefit in some areas, but at the expense of other characteristics.

I don't know if you ever played Master Of Orion II, but if you did, you may remember the concept where this was possible with the pre-game "picks" for race/culture design; where a race characteristic would be increased but another reduced; like a -10 in "Soldering" in order to gain a +1 pick, resulting in a total of 11 picks (rather than the initial +10) to apply when choosing positive picks. Yep, that concept would be good for GC/AP pre-game picks as well; but in the technology tree? The concept could be applied as raw gains at expense of other things due to a given cultural temperment (good, evil, etc). Not only that, it would be useful in certain technology tree advances according to which branch a player may follow for a given evolutionary developement of a race's characteristics; say Borg, Telapathic, Metaphysical, Human, and even on the basis of having either a good and evil alignment: where an evil race my ignor "Moral" or sacrifice it to the negative for a early gain in another technology category or specific in a category (branch).

In summary, if negative effects were possible along with the postive; and either were possible at values other than simply 10%, then a designer of a technology branch could certainly add much more flare to game play and related considerations... which, in turn, add greater strategic or tactical elements to playing a specific race/culture as the same advances in technology over time.

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Don't know if this qualifies as 'modding' per se, but...

When I go to upload my score to MetaVerse, there's a drop-down edit for selecting my name, and a couple boxes for entering my email address.

Is it possible to store this information? If so, what do I gotta do, so that it remembers me?

This is possible for improvements (including wonders/trade goods/achievments), with a caveat: all of the abilities that do something have some minimum they cannot pass. PQ penalties can't reduce a planet below class 1 (I've actually had a planet with a net -254% PQ in one heavily modded game). Planetary production reductions cannot reduce production below base levels, but do reduce bonuses you may pick up in the future.

~SDC~