What are the limits when it comes to modding?

I asking this, because I wanted to know that if we can mod in space combat or other new game mechanics.
Alex

We don't know yet, the Engine is still being made even as we speak.

There have been a few other threads of space combat and it's modability, you should try searching for those.

Short version is that in order for it to be mod-able Uber would more or less have to include it as a feature, but Uber has stated that Space combat would require things to be very different compared to the land/air/naval/orbital mechanics and that to include them is beyond the scope/budget of the project, perhaps after release or for a new game the engine could be updated for something like that.

Mike

I imagine entire new features like space combat won't be possible. (Though I would be surprised if orbital combat isn't)

I'm thinking things like new planet types and of course new units, maybe even new terrain types.

If you let mods run simulation scripts via some scripting language and gave it access to rendering and most of the game functions, theoretically your mod would be able to do anything.

Basically, if your game engine is built to be modular from the start, and open each module and part to mods, allowing mods to rewrite the core engine if they want to (replace module with a script) as well as make extensions, then yeah, you can do anything with mods.

I mean, if you look at how Spring RTS does it, mod gadgets can do *almost* anything. They can draw on the screen, change nearly every aspect of the units via scripts either to the whole unit definition or to each individual, they can intercept user inputs, allocate memory, engage the openGL renderer. It has a java, C++, python, etc. access and can spawn CPU threads independent of the game. (IIRC, it can do disk read operations, probably write to disk as well)
I would not be surprised if Spring Gadgets could implement PA's basic concept of multiple spherical worlds if they really wanted to. It would be hell and involve writing an extension of the game engine in LUA (yeah, you can make arbitrary changes to the game state with gadgets, including taking total control over projectile flight, unit movement, blah blah) and you'd have to fight the default behaviour every step of the way, but it might be possible.
The only thing it can't do is replace engine functions. Include that, and mods will have to power to do anything at all they like.

If the engine allows celestial body creation, space combat could be done by allowing players to create small metal planet-like spaceships in orbit, which then would be controlled with the same UI than asteroids with thrusters.

What I'd really want to see is the possibility to use the procedural engine for more than small spherical maps.
The procedural engine could allow for immense maps whose only a fraction would be used at one point, but the rest could be used for later extension, for staging, for giving landscape around the battle, so many possibilities would exist...
But it would mean that the engine allows for fully using only a small portion of the map and not completely render the rest of it (if some mountains are 100 km from the actual battle, no need to generate their finest details or even calculate pathfinding there). This is precisely the kind of things procedural generation allows for.
But I fear that the engine won't be built for that and it won't be possible, unfortunately...

I actually hope it is possible to create planets with own effects, that it is possible to mod planets, which are not in the game implemented