Thanks I'll work it out on my own

Some of https://www.galciv3.com/article/504716/modstech-spatial-manipulation-hypergates-stellar-architect-are-gone-help-me will help. But in retribution there is no such thing as an Altarian tech tree. That tree is from pre crusade. You want to copy the file, be very, very careful to only change the one variable (or what ever ones you do want) and save it as the same file name the game uses, but in the proper mod folder.

it can help yourself find a problem if you set a comment near your change that says what you did. <!-- starts a comment, and --> ends it. it can not have either of those tags inside it, anything else should be fair game. Do yourself a favor and try to avoid making 200 changes at once because troubleshooting that many can get difficult and quite frustrating. Doing 1-2 and saving and testing feels painfully slow but produces solid results and you know exactly where any problems are. Get a handle on that and then do more as your comfortable.

for windows the path is C:\Users\Owner\Documents\My Games\GC3Crusade\Mods\Charchs mods\Game where Owner is the name you used and charchs mods is your mod name instead. for macs i don't know. This is different from what was done in the link above, he made his own new tech tree and you want to make changes to the current one. So that is why these steps are different.

also the description is in another file so unless you change both, what you do will happen but it won't describe it right.

I don't want to change the Altarian tech tree, that was an example of changing a tech's modifier. But the tech I want to change is specifically in MasterTechDefs and MasterTechDefsText - I admit it was a bad example, but finding stuff on the GalCiv3 wiki for retribution isn't that easy due to its incompleteness

I know where all the files go and I put the mod files in the mods directory under a specific directory for what I was modding and the tech tree showed no changes. This is why I specified the Retribution tech tree and used changing the modifiers on the first tech I saw on the wiki as an example and Retribution information on the wiki is either absent or hard to find.

So where do I put the mod files for DLC\EXP4_Retribution\Game and DLC\EXP4_Retribution\English ? I've tried both reproducing the DLC directory tree and putting it directly under the my mod subdirectory and neither worked or appeared in the game.

TLDR: I already know everything in your response. Doing that isn't working.

Hi @Phaedyme,

Have you tried this tool from @treborblue?
https://forums.galciv3.com/499669/get;3801246
Note that it is still a work in progress.

I can't get it to run. I installed the .net framework last night and it just says to install it again

Also I appreciate your advice - I am sorry I was a bit snappish earlier. I did frame my question badly.

The files from the Retribution\Game directory go in the game directory in your mod directory. 

The files from the Retribution\English directory go in the text directory in your mod directory.

Here is the structure for a mod I made that is named "Heavy Survey Mod".

Don't forget to turn on mods.

Mods have definitely been on for at least 17 hours now.

Anyway, I should be able to copy MasterTechDefs and related files, edit them, and put them in those directories to see the changes?

Or put files with just the changes there?

Because none of them show up in the game at all and this was one of the first things I tried

how the game works is anything with the same file name as a game file replaces all other data in game. So you need to make a literal copy of everything, which is easier at the highlight and copy the file in some kind of file explorer program and then paste into into Mods\modname\game or Mods\modname\text as needed. But MasterTechDefs is what actually happens, and if everything else is true and the files are indeed in GC3Crusade folder than the file you need is MasterTechDefsText which changes the description of what happens.

The game doesn't care about the description and does not double check them, so your changes could have worked, but would only show if you actually checked what they are really doing, and not just went by what it says they do.

At this point the game should show your description or throw errors when trying to launch and we can trouble shoot those if need be. 

There is a GalCiv3 folder too, and files in there do not affect crusade. It will otherwise mostly look the same and have the same folders so this is 75% + of peoples issues here. Missing the Game and Text subfolders is a lot of the rest. If it shows your description, or throws an error than this isn't the problem here. If it doesn't show up and no errors happen it kind of has to be.

Nevermind

I am sorry you feel I was unhelpful or wasted your time. Old-Spider or anyone else who has the time and could tell me why what I said, and following those steps didn't help and what will I would truly appreciate it.

From a trying to help stand point, and prior tech support experience so I may have some bias. Unless I see you physically do it myself and it can explain most or all of the symptoms of an issue it is a likely cause. In addition even if it isn't your issue, repeating it helps anyone else who reads and that was the problem. 0 loss 100% net gain either way

Screen shots can quickly show what you did, not just describe it, which is why every single bug report prefers them when it is possible. Maybe I should of asked, but I am not doing paid support here either. Which is why I also did not repeat myself but linked to another post which had similarities and covered a lot of the more basic points anyways.

Lastly as I said in my post those steps should be producing 1-2 results. If it doesn't something I was unaware of seems to be what was going on. I am am unaware of anything that is going to alter if it works it shows up or if the code was wrong throws an error behavior outside the issues I listed. 

I have a limited scope of knowledge so above establishing fact up to the last point is beyond what I can do. If this conversation no longer interests you there are some options to no longer be notified below the post box.

I would like to expand my knowledge and be able to better help future people with these same issues so continuing to talk here makes sense to me.