"Hidden" Cheats

[TechSY730]

You guys have some interesting stuff tucked into the game.

I was looking through the language file to find the "copy current game setting into the lobby" command, and found some cheats I didn't remember.
Well, like any good engine "abuser" I had to try them out. So far, I have only tried base game stuff. I may search through the other expansions to see if you got any other fun stuff hidden away.

Here are some undocumented cheats/commands I tried so far:
ilostit: Based on the name of this string entry (Cheat_SpawnSpecificFGType), it seems that this is designed to spawn a specific foreground object (which includes one very important class of stuff, units), but I can't seem to get it to do so. It is recognizing it as a cheat, but it isn't doing anything. Maybe I'm not passing in the right number of parameters. (I was trying ilostit internal_fg_obj_type_name). Maybe you guys disable it when some debugging flag is turned off. I don't know.

EDIT: I typed it into the forums wrong, it is ilostit (I spelled it with an a previously)

cmd:log static variables: Does exactly what the name seems to suggest. Makes the game output a new log file called StaticVariableValues.txt that just seems to be a list of various static variable values and other stuff that seems to relate to current state of the game. Interesting if you want to gain insight into the "guts" of the game, but doesn't give you any sort of impact in game.

omni: This one is very interesting. It basically unlocks a large amount of stuff, gives you a bunch of bonus ships (as if you unlocked them from and ARS), gives you a new tab on command stations (or units with similar "I can build this" sets) called omni (letting you place all kinds of fun stuff, like core starships, some Mk. V fleet ships, and some of the other stuff you can build elsewhere, but in one big screen), and finally, changes how mobile units are produced, it make mobile units, instead of "queued" and sent out, makes them placed like structures. Very strange. Even stranger is the name of this string entry, Cheat_Arena. A testing relic of a long, canceled feature? Who can say? (Well, Chris and maybe Keith can...)

[Volatar]

omni: This one is very interesting. It basically unlocks a large amount of stuff, gives you a bunch of bonus ships (as if you unlocked them from and ARS), gives you a new tab on command stations (or units with similar "I can build this" sets) called omni (letting you place all kinds of fun stuff, like core starships, some Mk. V fleet ships, and some of the other stuff you can build elsewhere, but in one big screen), and finally, changes how mobile units are produced, it make mobile units, instead of "queued" and sent out, makes them placed like structures. Very strange. Even stranger is the name of this string entry, Cheat_Arena. A testing relic of a long, canceled feature? Who can say? (Well, Chris and maybe Keith can...)

That looks like a debugging tool right there. Nice.

[chemical_art]

omni: This one is very interesting. It basically unlocks a large amount of stuff, gives you a bunch of bonus ships (as if you unlocked them from and ARS), gives you a new tab on command stations (or units with similar "I can build this" sets) called omni (letting you place all kinds of fun stuff, like core starships, some Mk. V fleet ships, and some of the other stuff you can build elsewhere, but in one big screen), and finally, changes how mobile units are produced, it make mobile units, instead of "queued" and sent out, makes them placed like structures. Very strange. Even stranger is the name of this string entry, Cheat_Arena. A testing relic of a long, canceled feature? Who can say? (Well, Chris and maybe Keith can...)

ah sweet this is fun.


Also Keith: The V beam starship, while good at the time, is no completely overshadowed by the human spire starship.

The spire starship at MK I does 1.2 million damage over 10 seconds.

The beam starship at mk V .44 million damage over 10 seconds.

[chemical_art]

My face when I then turn off cheats after doing this.

Enjoy it while you can, I know this cheat won't stay long.


By "enjoy" I mean dwarf fortress level of fun...things are cucko in my game now.

[TechSY730]

Also, I found in a log file something about ExplosionNoiseSuppression.txt
Is this a way to turn off certain explosion noises or something? I know some players would be interested in that.

[chemical_art]

ExplosionNoiseSuppression.txt is exactly as you might think. Keith told me about it and it should in theory be moddable by a .txt document but we never did quite get it to work out Keith eventually got my goal done himself: Younglings don't scream when they die.

[TechSY730]

Ugh, I can't get ilostit to work. I tried for its arguments "type_name int", "int type_name", "type_name int int", and "int int type_name". None of them work.
I am suspecting that this cheat is disabled in the builds we get or something.
Too bad, I was looking forward to a "Gimmie an X" cheat.
Alas, it was not meant to be (or it is meant to do something completely different than what I am guessing it does, which is very possible)

[Bossman]

The beam starship at mk V .44 million damage over 10 seconds.

Remember to multiply that by nine because it's a Zenith beam, not a photon lance.

[Bognor]

The beam starship at mk V .44 million damage over 10 seconds.

Remember to multiply that by nine because it's a Zenith beam, not a photon lance.

I believe that, in contrast to the Zenith Beam Frigate, there's no limit on the number of ships the Beam Starship can hit 

[keith.lamothe]

The beam starship at mk V .44 million damage over 10 seconds.

Remember to multiply that by nine because it's a Zenith beam, not a photon lance.

I believe that, in contrast to the Zenith Beam Frigate, there's no limit on the number of ships the Beam Starship can hit 

No, it has the max-9-targets thing too, or it'd be ludicrously overpowered in many cases.  With appropriate linear saturation (easy if you catch the AI going from wormhole to wormhole) you could take out any number of AI fleet ships of low enough individual hp.

Also, it's harder to "fully hit" with a photon lance than with a heat beam.  Both come into their own against massive fleet blobs, and I certainly don't mind buffing the Beam-Star-V (I think fabricator units should be borderline-hilarious to compensate for the difficulty of obtaining and holding them, much less the specific ones you like most), but I don't think it's a case of massive overshadowing.

On the various undocumented cheats... well, "unsupported" is only the beginning   Omni, for one, hasn't been used by us for like 2 years, iirc, and is broken in various ways due to subsequent changes.

[TechSY730]

On the various undocumented cheats... well, "unsupported" is only the beginning   Omni, for one, hasn't been used by us for like 2 years, iirc, and is broken in various ways due to subsequent changes.

Yea, I know better than to try to report any bugs against this completely undocumented, unsupported stuff (short of "it deleted my hard drive" level bugs; I would probably report it in that case )
Just thought this would be interesting to share.

EDIT: Also, I'm guessing that Volatar's guess that omni is a (or at least was a) debugging tool was correct?

[LaughingThesaurus]

Please don't go removing those cheats, though. They do no harm... unless they don't affect score.

...yeah, in the same way that "Gimme Absolutely Positively Everything" does no harm. I can't play any games seriously but I tried that cheat and my frame rate plummeted and like 16 different things that shouldn't have happened started happening. It was kind of hilarious. I'm pretty sure I had control of stuff like a dyson sphere and a mining golem, but the planetary summary was too big for me to even begin to check. I do know for certain that I had a superterminal though.

And Omni was really interesting too. That made me want to mess with the cheats, since that is something that I CAN do. I will say that Omni is... well, slightly overpowered, in what it does to your ship building. Those ships don't cost resources and instantly spawn in! That's crazy. I didn't try too hard to go above ship caps though, so I don't know if it's really just convenient or if it's ludicrous.

[keith.lamothe]

Omni was a debugging tool added long ago, yes.

And I have no intention of removing any of these unless they become a "press button to crash game" situation, etc, so don't worry

[LaughingThesaurus]

Yay! Cheats make the world go round, you know.
...and in my case, make it go boom sometimes.

[chemical_art]

This cheat allows a unique form of cheesing no other cheat can provide and if I found it discovered I think it still could result in it being altered and or removed.

But if I just say it then I ruin the fun