Colony ships, for sale cheap!

[Quikngruvn]

This has been bugging me for while, so I figured I'd vent and get feedback....

Colony ships are cheap. Very cheap. Too cheap, IMO. Thus, extremely rapid expansion and development.

I'm curious to see how a game would develop if colony ships were more expensive (specifically, the colony module). But this is where things get murky for me. Since I have neither the time nor patience to experiment with the cost of colony modules, I'm leaving this open for discussion. From where I'm sitting, one could increase the cost of a colony module from anywhere from double to (an extreme of) ten times the current cost in all resources.

This has probably been discussed before-- has anyone actually tried a mod where the colony modules were buck-expensive (where everything else is unchanged)?

Quikngruvn

[geoschmo]

Not a bad thought. You could really go higher than 10 times if you wanted to. I am not sure what the absolute limit is in the components.txt file. It would definetly be an easy way to slow down expansion and stretch out games.

Would give more of an incentive to capture planets instead of glassing them.

You would need to consider ship maintenance though. If you went very high on the cost of the colony comp, you could conceivably push the maint so high that an empire just starting out could not even afford to have one, and thus you would never be able to get beyond your homeworld. You could add an ability to the colony component to reduce ship maint to counter that I guess.

Geoschmo

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>You could add an ability to the colony component to reduce ship maint to counter that I guess.<hr></blockquote>

If you do that, then what's to stop someone from making a Baseship with a colony module on it and getting low maintenance fleets? You should increase the size of the colony module by 600 kilotons and the colony ship by 620 kilotons and give the colony ship itself reduced maintenance. That way, you couldn't stick the colony module on a small war ship, like a light cruiser, to get a fast colony ship. The extra 20 spaces would allow more room for accessories like supplies, solar sails, cargo bays, etc. With huge colony modules (800 kilotons), you could still put one on a baseship to get a high initial population, but it would be slow and high-maintenanee.

[dmm]

I was going to try to argue that maybe the colony ship only carries enough stuff to "bootstrap" the colony. So that, instead of carrying housing modules, it carries a ready-to-assemble factory that makes use of local resources. But then I was unable to explain how they could make fully-functional domed habitats for 100,000 people in 1/10 of a year. That would be SOME factory!

So, instead I'll argue that private sources -- banks, merchants, industries, and the colonists themselves -- bear most of the cost of a colony ship. The cost paid by an empire is only the cost of subsidizing the colonization. In contrast, military ships are paid for entirely by the empire.

What do you think of that idea?

[dmm]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
You should increase the size of the colony module by 600 kilotons and the colony ship by 620 kilotons and give the colony ship itself reduced maintenance.<hr></blockquote>
But then you could use ramming colony ships for warp-point defense in the early game. And in general, they would be very hard to kill with an early-game warship. Although that might lead to some interesting games.

[Fyron]

I said to incease the size, not the hit points. These huge colony ships would still be as vulnerable as the regular colony ships.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>So, instead I'll argue that private sources -- banks, merchants, industries, and the colonists themselves -- bear most of the cost of a colony ship. The cost paid by an empire is only the cost of subsidizing the colonization. In contrast, military ships are paid for entirely by the empire.

What do you think of that idea?<hr></blockquote>

That's a good idea, but it kind of misses the point. The point of making colony ships expensive is to slow down the incredibaly rapid rate of expansion, not just to make you spend more money.

[ 16 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[dmm]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
I said to incease the size, not the hit points. These huge colony ships would still be as vulnerable as the regular colony ships.<hr></blockquote>
Aahhhh, I see.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
That's a good idea, but it kind of misses the point. The point of making colony ships expensive is to slow down the incredibaly rapid rate of expansion, not just to make you spend more money.
<hr></blockquote>
I was just trying to justify the current costs. I think the problem is more in the speed of building structures than in the speed of establishing colonies.
Example: You establish a colony on a huge world, and start building mines. [Edit: I mean mines as in mining facilities.] In only 30 years, you've covered the entire surface with mines. What??!! Holy Cow! that's a lot of mines!
Another example: In the same turn that you colonize, you can fill up the colony with settlers (from transports) to its max pop. What??!! Where did all that housing come from?
Sooooo, what you really need to do is to make all planets hold 6x as much stuff, decrease the capabilities of all facilities by 4x, get Aaron to add housing facilities to hold pop, and change the pop production bonuses to fit this new model. Then find some people who like to play excruciatingly long games! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ 16 January 2002: Message edited by: dmm ]</p>

[Phoenix-D]

"You should increase the size of the colony module by 600 kilotons and the colony ship by 620 kilotons and give the colony ship itself reduced maintenance"

Why bother increaseing the size? Just stick the reduced maintaince on the ship hull itself (ala the bases). No muss, no fuss, a warship with a colony component pays full price.

Phoenix-D

[geoschmo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
If you do that, then what's to stop someone from making a Baseship with a colony module on it and getting low maintenance fleets? <hr></blockquote>
Good point. You could apply the maintenance reduction ability to the hull instead of the compponent. That should eliminate that problem.

Geoschmo

[Quikngruvn]

Ah, great minds think alike.... Making the colony ship hull low-maintentance sounds like the trick. And a player could still get a slightly-faster colonizer with a warship hull... though with the maintenance as high as all that, I don't see why.

I was wondering if a player could try the argument the other way around, by making a warfleet of nothing but low-maintenance colony ship hulls, but a colony ship is required to be at least 50% colony module, so that scenario is not viable.

Now... how buck-expensive to make the colony module....?

Quikngruvn

[Fyron]

I said to put the maintenance reducution on the colony ship, not on the colony module.

With a med tech start and a medium homeworld, with no construction bonuses, a colony ship costs 4850 minerals and the homeworld builds at 2600 resources per turn. The colony ship takes 4850/2600 or 1.865 turns to build. The standard colony module costs 2000 minerals. To get a build time of X, we need to increase the cost of the colony module to some amount, as modeled below:

Ex: 3 turns to build
1) Total minerals production of planet/cost needed for X build time: 2600*3=7800
2) Extra cost needed: 7800-4850=2950
3) New mineral cost of colony module: 2000+2950=4950

4 turns to build
1) 2600*4=10400
2) 10400-4850=5550
3) 2000+5550=7550

5 turns to build
1) 2600*5=13000
2) 13000-4850=8150
3) 2000+8150=10150

6 turns to build
1) 2600*6=15600
2) 15600-4850=10750
3) 2000+10750=12750

7 turns to build
1) 2600*=18200
2) 18200-4850=13350
3) 2000+13350=15350

8 turns to build
1) 2600*8=20800
2) 20800-4850=15950
3) 2000+15950=17950

9 turns to build
1) 2600*9=23400
2) 23400-4850=18550
3) 2000+18550=20550

10 turns to build
1) 2600*10=26000
2) 26000-4850=21150
3) 2000+21150=23150

I suggest that we make the colony ship take about 8 turns to build, so the minerals cost of the colony module should be raised to 17950, or maybe 18000 even.


I removed the http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif that appeared where it shouldn't have appeared.


[ 18 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[Spoo]

But you need to take into account the advantage to players who max out their construction trait. As it stands now, even with +50% construction plus the Engineer (125% base) cultural trait, a colony ship still takes 2 turns to build. If the build time was increased to 8 to 10 turns, those with the advanced constuction traits would be able to expand exponentally faster than those with out (5 or 6 turns per ship then each colony can send out more ships faster and so on).

[ 18 January 2002: Message edited by: Spoo ]</p>

[Fyron]

A race that takes 150% construction rate and Hardy Industrialists spends 4500 racial points. They'd get their medium sized planet to have 4100 construction points. This would allow the proposed 8 turn colony ship (20800 minerals) to be built in 20800/4100 or 5.07 turns, which rounds up to 6 turns. This would represent a 25% increase in the rate of expansion. If you want to spend 4500 points on something, then you should get an advantage from it. And this option is really only viable in a 5000 point game, which, in my experience, is the exception, not the rule. If this is a big problem for you, then we could increase the cost per point beyond 20 of Construction from 100 to 200. That would make it really expensive to get this fast colonization.

[ 18 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]</p>

[dumbluck]

I like this idea. I had been toying with the idea of increasing the cost of the colony module myself, but I don't really have the time right now to do that. (PBW being down right now is actually a blessing for me. Busy, busy, busy!!!)

[Fyron]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>I was just trying to justify the current costs. I think the problem is more in the speed of building structures than in the speed of establishing colonies.
Example: You establish a colony on a huge world, and start building mines. [Edit: I mean mines as in mining facilities.] In only 30 years, you've covered the entire surface with mines. What??!! Holy Cow! that's a lot of mines!
Another example: In the same turn that you colonize, you can fill up the colony with settlers (from transports) to its max pop. What??!! Where did all that housing come from?
Sooooo, what you really need to do is to make all planets hold 6x as much stuff, decrease the capabilities of all facilities by 4x, get Aaron to add housing facilities to hold pop, and change the pop production bonuses to fit this new model. Then find some people who like to play excruciatingly long games! <hr></blockquote>

Alternatively, you could double or triple the build times of the basic facilities, thereby making it take 60 or 90 turns to fill up a huge planet.

[Suicide Junkie]

As another alternative, change the construction rate modifiers, so planets with 1M people build at 10% speed, with +1% for every 4M people or so.

I have a program to do that; just specify what settings you want.

[Quikngruvn]

I agree with IF about the racial points. Anyone wiling to spend that many points should get faster builds. Just wondering where you'd sacrifice, and what would happen when you meet other races who don't build as quick, but have nasty combat (and other) bonuses.

Upping facility costs and SJ's contruction-per-population idea are intriguing. I guess it's a matter of where to put the bottleneck: on expansion or on planetary development. Either would completely change the game. Both, and you'll be playing till SEVI comes out!

Quikngruvn

[Suicide Junkie]

Both are almost the same thing, except my method is a littlemore involved/fancy, and adds 5000 lines to settings.txt (I hope SE4 can handle that).

[PvK]

My Proportions mod (see Gold) addresses issues with population trasport, population growth, population effects on both production and construction (different curves) and colony development versus developed homeworlds. Of course, it does make it take years to build up colonies that can add much to the output of a homeworld, but the homeworld itself is enough to field a decent fleet. That is, I like realistically slow development, but probably a lot of players' reactions would be along the lines of "WTF! It takes forever to fully develop a planet!"

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Tweaking the population bonuses for colonies in favour of well developped worlds would help, as would enhancing the cloak/ sensor system for advanced cat & mouse games in all those empty systems.<hr></blockquote>1% SY rate per 25M people would go a long way towards that goal. Homeworlds would get 200% @ 5 Billion, while the colonies would be nearly helpless. A huge transport full of people might be able to jump-start a colony, but every % you add has to come from some other planet.
If anybody ever fills up a Dyson Sphere, they get 2,560 % http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

What do you think of the cloaking system described in A Pirate's Life?

- Stealth armor gives Passive EM cloak (upto level 4)
- Scattering armor gives Active EM cloak (lev 4)
- Master Computers give Psychic cloak (lev 4)
- Hull Size gives gravitic cloak (upto lev 4)
- E-Security teams give "Hacker" cloak (lev 4)
(using old temporal ability. "Temporal sensors" scan both EM types plus some gravitic.)

That way, a baseship makes a huge blip on your gravitic radar, no matter how good the rest of its stealth is.
An escort or frigate is undetectable by gravitics, but does not have the space on board to carry all of the other cloaking devices plus engines & weapons.
With the numbers I threw out, only the frigates could be completely undetectable, but they would have only 30KT for weapons & engines.
A one-MP plaguebomber, or a 3-MP scout, and very vulnerable to minefields http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[PvK]

The colony ship and population notions are nice - again, similar to my Proportions mod (huge expensive slow colony ships that can only carry 1M population, and a very slow (realistic) population growth rate and effects on production).

I'm not sure why cloaking is coming up in this thread, but the system below has very nice ideas. I especially like the gravitic effects by hull and will do something similar in future Proportions/Foundations mod Versions.

Spiffy ideas here!

PvK

[PvK]

To go into more detail on what Proportions does and what effects it has on play, much of what dogscoff describes is there, though there are some things which I may add from his ideas to the next Version.

Proportions is the first step towards my larger and more sweeping Foundations mod, so I haven't done nearly all that I set out to do, but currently, population are 1000 kT each and reproduce only annually, rather than each month, which removes the silly "minimum 1 million new civillians per month" reproduction rate. The population effects curves are dramatic and detailed at the low end. Resource production gets up to normal with fairly low population, so mining and research/intel colonies don't require billions, but construction only slowly rises throughout the curve. This means that it takes between two and three years to build a single resupply facility on a new colony, unless a huge armada of population transports comes along, and even then it takes a while. An interesting side effect is that event crises like core instabilities and even plagues (which I modded a bit) can be major important events that the player may want to build large exodus fleets to try to save population - and will have a really hard time evacuating much of a homeworld at all even with dozens of transports and a few years to evacuate.

Also, I greatly reduced the value of colony facilities while loading homeworlds with "Cultural Center" facilities which represent developed civilizations and give a lot of abilities, and would take an extremely long time to build on a colony world. Then there are intermediate urban facilities of various sizes which are fairly long-term investments but are attainable during a game and have a respectable output.

Pseudo-Newtonian propulsion and supply limits do have interesting effects, though not quite what dogscoff had in mind. My colony ships are 1800 kT (1500 taken by colony module), require 8 engines, and with ion engines can only make speed 2, which has similar effects to his vision of making colonies a long trip. They are expensive enough that they become a major part of the fleet budget if many are fielded at once, and of course they are very vulnerable if not escorted, because they are both weak and slow. The colony module itself gives cargo storage of 1000 kT, so it can carry one population unit. Only medium transports or starliners (new ship class) can carry a population unit, and the max for a transport is two or three. I had to reduce the capacity of cargo modules and unit launchers to balance this out.

Supply has become a major factor, and resupply depots are one of the most important things a colony can provide. On the other hand, the capital ship range limit described by dogscoff is not really in Proportions, because supply components are cheap - resupply ships become a useful design. I think in order to get the effect of limiting capital ships to developed systems, they will need to be slower and maybe need to have a supply cost from their ship size/class - I'll have to test if that's possible.

Small ships are quite useful in Proportions, however, because of the movement system, the size to-hit modifiers, the limited electronic warfare mods, reduced costs, and lower engine requirements.

The AI seems to handle it pretty well, although only in my latest (post-Gold) Version does it know what to build on colonies, which makes a huge difference. It also has a hard time dealing with the supply range limits in some cases, though I have been working on that with some success.

However I think still it would be best with only human players, also because capturing a home world would be a huge prize, and players would probably concentrate on trying to rob them from the AI. Cultural Centers do add a lot of cargo space though, and the AI does seem to build a truly formidable array of weapons platforms on them, so I think it's at least interesting to play against. I'm hoping when Gold is released and PBW restored, we can get a good multi-player game going to try it out.

PvK

Edit: corrected stats on colony ships

[ 27 January 2002: Message edited by: PvK ]</p>

[dogscoff]

PvK - your proportions mod sounds brilliant!. Did you say it's on the Gold CD?

Another reason to look forward to that CD coming into my letterbox...

S_J - I like your system . Sensors / cloaking has needed a revamp for a long time. Looking forward to it=-)

(Sorry I'm not posting more after your exhaustive Posts, but it's late and I'm on dialup and I just drank lots of wine and... well... later.

[ 27 January 2002: Message edited by: dogscoff ]</p>

[dogscoff]

Here is something I posted in the "modder's brainstorming session" thread, May 2001. I've tweaked it a little for this thread:


First, the map generator files would have to be modded to make colonisable planets/ systems rarer and farther apart. This would increase their value and force players to look beyond their home systems.
Huge maps with fewer empires would also help.

Now, make transport hulls, colony ships and colony components far bigger. I'm thinking maybe 800-1000 kt colony ships with harsh combat penalties, and a 700-900 kt colony component which can nonetheless be destroyed with only a few shots. The colony component should also be prohibitively expensive- this might have the added effect of making retrofit "cheats" impossible (due to the 50% rule).

Cargo components should be split into 2 types: Small ones and huge ones which will only fit on transports. The ones for smaller ships should be of limited use and efficiency, forcing players to use large ships for any serious cargo movement. Unit sizes could be increased, to further limit the usefulness of small colony components.

Now adjust supply usage/ storage so that long range travel is really difficult for large ships, but relatively easy for smaller ones. I think you'd have to use some kind of quasi newtonian system with a steep curve in favour of small ships.

Setting up a new colony would now be a *major* investment (and hence a *major* risk)- especially in another system. You would also find it difficult to transport weapons platforms and other defences with your colony. The colony ships would be slow, fragile, and easy to hit in combat, and would have to cross many systems of empty space before reaching their destination. A "bodyguard" fleet would be essential.

Colonising your home system would still be fairly easy, but newly colonised systems would be extremely vulnerable. This is good, after all it's a long way home. Facilities should take longer to build, so that a new colony does not establish itself and become independent of external defence/ support too quickly.

The supply restrictions on bigger ships and cargo restrictions on smaller ones would limit the expansion of infrastructure, so military domination would then revolve around the strategic placement of fleets, mines, sats, space stations and colonies rather than simply racing to develop the bigger production base and throw ships at the enemy.

Glassing a planet would be a desperate measure, and troop attack/ defence essential. Perhaps tweak weapon platform mounts and population toughness to make established planets less easy to conquer, but balance the added effectiveness with higher cost, again restricting the rate at which a new colony develops independence.

Fleets of small ships would be able to roam from system to system and rule over frontier space. However they would be more or less powerless against the defences of established systems. Attacking such a system would be an enormous project, involving gigantic motherships subject to similar limitations as the transports. However, you'd constantly be on the lookout for new colonies to conquer, since they would be comparatively easy to take but represent a huge reward. Kind of like predatory animals preying on the young, the weak and the sick at the edges of the herd=-)

Acquiring non-military techs (ie colonisation, stellar manip, cargo, supply) would become more important. Remote mining would play a greater role, as would moons, storms and nebulae. Physical warfare would become the Last resort when diplomacy and intel fail, although having good defences around your home systems would be more important than ever.

It would make for a much slower and more deliberate game, since ships and planets would no longer be "throwaway" items. Combat would be rarer but when it happened it would be truly epic, with loads of allied empires in gigantic battles.

Some or all of these ideas may have been implemented in PvK's proportion mod, and I'm sure there are things in there which might be applied to all what I've posted here. Tweaking the population bonuses for colonies in favour of well developped worlds would help, as would enhancing the cloak/ sensor system for advanced cat & mouse games in all those empty systems. Some of S_J's components (ie hardened bulkheads, cheap/ quality mounts) would make good additions since they make ships more individual.

I don't know how the AI would cope with all this (It might do quite well actually) but it would be cool for human players - a whole new game with a whole new feel.

[PvK]

Cheers dogscoff,

yes Proportions is on the Gold CD, although by the time you get it, there'll be a new and improved Version. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

PvK

[PvK]

I looked into supplies used by larger ships, and don't see a way to do it except by engines (I don't think anything else can be made to use supplies per movement - if someone knows differently, please let me know).

So, to make larger ships more range-limited, all I can think of at present (since larger ships generally have _more_ spare space for supply storage), would be to jack up their engines/move rating, and then provide two sorts of engines - high-output engines with high standard thrust but high supply consumption, and long-haul engines with lower thrust but lower supply consumption. In this way, a large ship could be either very slow and long-range, or reasonable-speed but short-range (or jammed full of supply storage). The side-effect would be that you could put high-output engines on a small ship and get a very fast short-range interceptor. Which might be a neat system overall - I'll play with making Proportions more this way, and see what I can come up with. I think I won't make it as extrme as dogscoff mentioned, because Proportions ships are already pretty short-ranged unless they stock lots of supplies, and I think just having large ships be significantly slower already limits them pretty well.

PvK

[eorg]

engines with 0 movement required in larger quantity in bigger ships? called crew quarters? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

[PvK]

Hmmmm, worth trying to see if it can work - have you tested it yet?

Even if it does work, master computers obviate the need for crew quarters, so some fiddling might need to be done, at least, to compensate.

PvK

[Val]

Just started catching up on this thread, can't wait to try the proportions Mod on Gold, sounds incredible! Have you seen the pop curve that SJ had modded for the B5 mod?

[jimbob]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>a large ship could be either very slow and long-range, or reasonable-speed but short-range (or jammed full of supply storage). The side-effect would be that you could put high-output engines on a small ship and get a very fast short-range interceptor. Which might be a neat system overall <hr></blockquote>

= Good!

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Val:
Just started catching up on this thread, can't wait to try the proportions Mod on Gold, sounds incredible! Have you seen the pop curve that SJ had modded for the B5 mod?<hr></blockquote>

Thanks Val!

I don't think I've seen SJ's B5 pop curve. The Proportions one has 59 categories, 37 of which are below 1 billion.

PvK

[eorg]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:
Hmmmm, worth trying to see if it can work - have you tested it yet?

Even if it does work, master computers obviate the need for crew quarters, so some fiddling might need to be done, at least, to compensate.

PvK<hr></blockquote>

no this was first thing that come to my... hmmm... brain (this was unusable thing inside my skull right?) when i see your idea :)

[Rlaney]

I love all the ideas for adjusted populations and reproduction etc... But has anyone figured out how to add maintenance costs to facilities so that a larger empire can't necessarily overpower a smaller empire in research and intel? A maintenace cost would force them to be more selective about what they build and would prevent large empires from filling up 20 planets with research facilities and running up the tech tree then wiping out smaller empires. Tech leakage would be another concept but I think that would have to be hardcoded.

[dmm]

Maintenance costs for facilities: They need power and water and periodic upkeep. And the workers like to be paid for their efforts. Even scientists. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Rlaney]

How about this, Home planet generally starts at 2000m pop. Assume that that is the base 100% production setting then modify down 2% per 50 pop and up 1% per 50 to maximum of 500%. This works out to a maximum pop on huge world being at 220%(if my math is right). Now the question. Am I correct in assuming that the pop modifiers in setting are % values? So if I set one to 10 then they will build at ten percent....correct?

[geoschmo]

True maintenance costs for facilities would also have to be hardcoded, but it might be possible for the research and intel facilities to generate negative resources each turn without a hardcode change. If the game engine will accept negative values for those abilities as it does for others. I have never tried it. It would take some tweaking to get the numbers right, but that would reflect ongoing costs of research and intel, beyond just building of the buildings.

Geoschmo

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Rlaney:
How about this, Home planet generally starts at 2000m pop. Assume that that is the base 100% production setting then modify down 2% per 50 pop and up 1% per 50 to maximum of 500%. This works out to a maximum pop on huge world being at 220%(if my math is right). Now the question. Am I correct in assuming that the pop modifiers in setting are % values? So if I set one to 10 then they will build at ten percent....correct?<hr></blockquote>

Yes, you can mod it to work this way if you like. Yes, that is how the pop modifiers work - they are in percentages.

PvK

[Rlaney]

Hey Pvk, you're the one who made the proportions mod right? I love it but I've made a few changes to it. I lowered the cost of cities a bit and added a negative resource cost per turn to research and intel facilities to make it more efficient to actually build up a colonies infrastructure than just slappin down r&d buildings. How do you think the AI will handle this? I can mod almost everything BUT the AIs. everytime I try the do funky things.

Actually after looking more closely at the way you set up cities, cultural centers, etc. I wonder if maybe there shouldn't be a negative cost on ALL facilities other than these to simulate subsidization of a colony as opposed to a planet with a thriving city economy. Specialized military buildings should almost definately have a cost associated with them, imho.

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]</p>

[Rlaney]

Ok, I addded the maintenance cost for research and intel. No problem worked great. Suddenly an asteroid struck my home planet and wiped out 2 of the cultural centers there. Suddenly I can't support my research colonies and my fleet...what to do... Just a couple more turns and I'll have destroyers but will my fleet survive till then? This sucks...it's great!! Bad luck can just tear you up in this mod.

[PvK]

Yes, several of the events become more interesting in Proportions, because things take more effort to build up. A couple of times I've found myself doing all I can to evacuate populations with large fleets of transports.

The maintenance costs is a good idea and I'm glad it works. I agree that military installations should cost maintenance, although it will need to be balanced carefully and tested to see what good values are. In the early game there is an abundance of resources, but fleet maintenance is already pretty expensive. If facilities cost too much, it might be really hard to make much net forward progress at all. Take your game a bit further into the "mid game," and see if you're able to develop a helpful infrastructure.

Another neat thing might be to make pre-arcology urban developments consume more organics than they produce.

Have you been using fleets of transports to increase build rates? Cities can take forever if you don't, but if you can get enough population, then they become more practical investments. Of course, if you have enemies, those parades of transports should probably be guarded... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

[PvK]

Oh, as for the AI, it sucks at developing colonies in Proportions Versions before the not-yet-released 1.5. This is fixed in the Version I'm about to release, and it might be ok even if you add maintenance costs, but it depends on how expensive they are.

PvK

[Rlaney]

I added -25 minerals -100 organics and -25 radioactives to the research center. The interesting thing is that on a new planet it comes out to -6 -25 -6. Be interesting to see if the cost increases as the population grows but I guess that would actually make a kind of sense as more people means more maintenance if not necessarily more productivity. BTW...I'm playing with finite resources turned on, I'm just guessing here but this WASN'T meant to be played with that option on was it!?!? LOL. My economy is collapsing...I can't maintain my Navy... I feel so Russian.

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]</p>

[PvK]

Ya, the reason is that your "maintenance" is actually negative production, so the maintenance cost will be in proportion to the amount of points generated by the facility, which is based in large part on the population of the planet. The curve is not as severe as the construction rate curve, though.

And no, limited resources will lead to disaster, because the cultural centers will eat away all of your homeworld's resources... you would need to add a powerful value improvement ability to cultural centers in order for Proportions to work with limited resources. I'll put a warning about that in the next readme file.

PvK

[Rlaney]

I figured that the resources thing was somethin like that. I modified the production curve down to what the sy rate was at in the settings modifiers, just kinda made more sense to me. I kinda like the finite resources thing though. It's definately a challenge. I'm spending alot of time layin out miner sats(dropped robos from 100t to 50t to make this possible without extreme research) and am furiously working towards solar collectors. I think they are Crystal tech so i may have to change that to make them accessible to others too.

Ok, I added a 10% plus to change resource value on the Cultural Center and upped the cost as high as I could so that you'd need to be really determined and patient to build them at all. The colony culture centers I didn't mess with but I don't think the homeworld centers should be buildable except on homeworld. Of course if you lose some.... ok maybe a 4% or 5% on the colony ones. thsi makes your homeworld extremely valuable and you'd better defend it appropriately.

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]

New problem, value changes don't seem to work with finite resources on. hmmm.... maybe add in solar generation?

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]</p>

[PvK]

Heh, you increased the cost of cultural centers? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

It already takes about a hundred years to create a CC even on a homeworld with five billion people...

I'll just say that if you're planning to play 100 years against the computer, I'd recommend patching to 1.5 when it comes out, because the AI will do a much better job of doing something meaningful in the meantime. In 1.3, after 100 years almost all their colonies will have nothing on them but a CC under construction at about 25% complete, I would think. 1.5 will fix this, but you'll have to re-apply your tweaks.

PvK

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Rlaney:
[QB]New problem, value changes don't seem to work with finite resources on. hmmm.... maybe add in solar generation?
<hr></blockquote>

Really? I'm sure people have reported using value improvement plants in finite resources games, which use abilities like:

Planet - Change Minerals Value

Maybe it is based on a percentage of the resources remaining, so if you're down to 0, you can't improve them... ?

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>I'm spending alot of time layin out miner sats(dropped robos from 100t to 50t to make this possible without extreme research) and am furiously working towards solar collectors. I think they are Crystal tech so i may have to change that to make them accessible to others too.<hr></blockquote>I heard that solar resource generation ability depleted your finite resources. I don't know if it has been fixed, so test that to be sure.

Also, in finite resources, the Value improvement is an actual percent multiplier, not just +x%.
If you have 500 KT of resources, and a VI 3, you get 515 KT of resources at the end of the year.
This also means that if you have depleted the resources on a planet, it will NEVER get any more resources EVER AGAIN.
What you can do, is change settings.txt, so that when a colony is destroyed, it adds resource value.
-OR-
you can try creating a facility that produces a negative amount of resource, thus "seeding" the planet with organics/minerals/radioactives.
Perhaps only organic seeding would be appropriate; and along with a resource converter, you'd have all you need.

Value improvement also only happens on integer year months (2401.0, 2412.0, 1500.0 etc)

[geoschmo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
&lt;snip&gt;-OR-
you can try creating a facility that produces a negative amount of resource, thus "seeding" the planet with organics/minerals/radioactives.
&lt;snip&gt;<hr></blockquote>

I started to post that this wasn't possible, then I thought, maybe I'll test it first. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

It actually works. I depleted the resources from a planet, then built on of our research facility/negative mineral facilities from earlier in the thread. The values comes out of your empires coffers and go directly into the planetary value.

Cool!

Geo

[Phoenix-D]

I wonder what that does in a infinite resources game?

Phoenix-D

[Rlaney]

Yeah, after further testing negative production values put the resources into the planet apparently. So much for maintenance cost on buildings that way. Also there is a twenty abilities limit on buildings, 21 is ignored. On the cultural centers I just changed the big one. I wanted to set it so that it can't be built but just exists on the homeworld. May have to make it associated with a tech that is unattainable. What file controls what buildings are on the homeworld at the start anyway? I may adjust the culture centers to be more powerful as solar resource gatherers and remove the mining abilities. Just a thought... don't mean to go messin up your mod.

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]</p>

[geoschmo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
I wonder what that does in a infinite resources game?

Phoenix-D<hr></blockquote>
Well, I haven't tested that, but I would guess the same thing standard resource facilities do in a infinite resource game. It would subtract the resources from the empire total, but not change the planet's value.

And the amount of resources subtracted would be factored by the value of the planet. That part is a little wierd, but I'm not sure how you would get around it. Basically a research facility would cost less to operate on a mineral poor planet than on a mineral rich one. Kind of the opposite of what you would think really. Something to keep in mind, but the effect should be small I would think.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Rlaney:
On the cultural centers I just changed the big one. I wanted to set it so that it can't be built but just exists on the homeworld. May have to make it associated with a tech that is unattainable. What file controls what buildings are on the homeworld at the start anyway?<hr></blockquote>The only way to do that I think would be have a different set of data files for the game startup and then change to play the game. If the tech is unatainable, then noone will ahve it by default and wont be able to have one on theri homeworld, I believe.

No file controls the starting facs. It's hardcoded. But you can play around with it by changin the abilities of the various facilities so the game chosses them.

Geoschmo

[Rlaney]

Yeah, for finite resources I may have to tone down cultural centers a bit. My purpose for trying to add maintenance to research and intel is to prevent larger empires from overwhleming smaller ones with sheer research ability. Kind of make a smaller empire a more viable option in the game. There is a restrictions line in the facilities.txt but it is supposedly not used. That must be hardcoded too.

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by geoschmo:
...

No file controls the starting facs. It's hardcoded. But you can play around with it by changin the abilities of the various facilities so the game chosses them.

Geoschmo<hr></blockquote>

I thought it was controlled by the AI planet building file, under the Homeworld entry - I was pretty sure that determined it.

As for preventing building cultural centers on colonies, I don't see why you'd want to, since they are about the same as colony cultural centers, and both of them are so costly that it's nearly impossible to actually build them, anway.

PvK

[Rlaney]

My only reason for taking them out was that I toned down the regular ones a little to keep them from strip-mining a planet immediately and I wanted to make the main ones kind of like a palace or Empire Capital bonus. I love your mod but I'm tryin to adjust it to my preferred playing style(finite resources). I have no intention of posting it as a mod, but if I did I would certainly get your permission first(and certainly give you credit) since I'm just making adjustments to all your hard work. Thanks for all your hard work btw.

[geoschmo]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:


I thought it was controlled by the AI planet building file, under the Homeworld entry - I was pretty sure that determined it.
<hr></blockquote>

Ok, well correct, sort of. The AI_Construction_Facilities does have entries for homeworlds. However it's not looking for specific facilitiy names, but abilities. So I suppose you could play with that to a point and get a different makeup on the homeworlds. I haven't tried it myself. I thought I remembered someone saying they did and it had no effect. But I could be remembering that wrong. Either way I guess it depends on what the goal is.

Also the game does have some hardcode overides I know about for sure. For example in a high tech start it won't build research fac's, even thoguh they are listed in the file.

Geoschmo

[PvK]

Rlaney, don't worry - I'm happy you're enjoying Proportions and are trying new things out! It would be cool if you could get it to work ok with limited resources - I just assumed it wouldn't work.

It sounds to me like you could use the resource improvement abilities to compensate for the drain on homeworlds. I guess ideally, you would want to make the drain just slightly higher than the replenishment, but it will be hard to balance, I think, also if an empire takes advanced storage techniques or reduced planet exploitation, it will throw off your balancing.

I had intended to include resource depletion in the larger Version of the mod (Foundations), by using negative resource improvement abilities while playing an "infinite resources" game. That would give a much more realistic pace to resource depletion than the "finite resources" mechanic, and it wouldn't throw away the extraction rate modifiers the way that "finite resources" does. The only problem is that, at least when I tested it back around 1.57 or so, setting negative values on resource improvement had no effect. I explained this in a report to MM, but I haven't bothered to test to see if he actually made a change - there is no note in the history.txt file about a change, but not all changes appear there. I'd be obliged if you'd like to give it a test. Make a facility with resource improvement at -50 or so and then sit it on a planet for over a year, and see if the resource levels go down at all. If it does... it'll be really cool. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

[Rlaney]

In finite it takes resource from your pool and puts them back into the planet instead of just taking them away. I fixed the cultural thing sort of... I got rid of them. Mostly they duplicated bonuses on the cities. I made the cities about as powerful as equivalent level facilities, i.e. resource I intel I storage I...also I changed the resourece to solar generation and set it pretty high for the cities. One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage. I worked around this by adding shields to all facilities. 250 for level I, 500 level II, 750 level III...with some exceptions. Resupply depots are 1000. Yards are 1000, 2000, and 3000 and cities are the same. This means it takes a big fleet to glass a planet and shields go up as infrastructure increases. Now if you can make an AI that will use troops and try to invade planets instead of just throwing ships at them it'll be pretty close to perfect. I tested 10 high tech escorts against a home planet and they couldn't take the shields down with wave motion guns... But this was a homeworld with 8 cities I think so that kind of balances. Remains to be seen how difficult conquering a less developed colony world will be.

I like the propulsion/mass relation. If only we could set ships with no supplies to move every other turn or even every 3rd it would make supplies an important part of the game.


To try and balance the higher cost of colony ship I had to set the solar gen on cities pretty high so it's hard in the begining to field more than maybe 3 escorts and 1 colony ship but that prevents massive expansion in the early game and makes building up a good planet more important

[ 16 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]</p>

[PvK]

I like your suggestion to add "shield" values to facilities, although I don't think it should be impossible to bLast planets with the right weapons. However I don't understand what you mean by:

"One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage."

What do you mean?

The AI will use troops, sometimes.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>If only we could set ships with no supplies to move every other turn or even every 3rd it would make supplies an important part of the game.<hr></blockquote>

I find that supplies are very important in Proportions. A ship with ion engines mark I and no extra supply storage only has a one-way range of 19 sectors! In 1.5 the situation is even more interesting, with some of the suggestions from Dogscoff and others worked in, so that there are two grades of all marks of engines with different output and efficiency - with capital ships you have to trade off range against speed, and the difference in speed between small and large ships is greater.

PvK

[Rlaney]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:
I like your suggestion to add "shield" values to facilities, although I don't think it should be impossible to bLast planets with the right weapons. However I don't understand what you mean by:

Not impossible, just difficult. I made all planetary weapons (bombs) skip shields. I could tone it down more but I hate the AI just coming in and glassing planet with no attempt at conquest.

"One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage."

What do you mean?

damage to kill 1 pop= 100

escort, 1 depleeted uranium cannon= 100 damage against unshielded planet. Oddly enough the anti-planet drone warheads seem to work correctly.

I find that supplies are very important in Proportions. A ship with ion engines mark I and no extra supply storage only has a one-way range of 19 sectors! In 1.5 the situation is even more interesting, with some of the suggestions from Dogscoff and others worked in, so that there are two grades of all marks of engines with different output and efficiency - with capital ships you have to trade off range against speed, and the difference in speed between small and large ships is greater.

Oh it works great at higher tech but low tech-low thrust engines give at least one move supplied or not.

PvK<hr></blockquote>

[Rlaney]

sorry for that mess, still tryin to figure out the quotes thing on here.

[Phoenix-D]

""One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage."

What do you mean?"

It means that weapons will always kill at least one population per hit. Setting it to 1000 will prevent any weapon (except mounted napalm) from killing more than ONE pop per hit, but won't prevent them from doing damage.

I think.

Phoenix-D

[PvK]

Oh, thanks Phoenix... that's... interesting. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Rlaney]

Hey PvK. I think I may have found a glitch in proportions. Check the happiness.txt file and make sure that the modifiers that are supposed to make people happy have a - in front of them. I'm expanding and building cities and people are just gettin more and more pisssed. LOL Looked at the happiness file and all are set to cause negative responses.

nevermind, My mistake. lookin at the wrong mod file.

[ 16 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]</p>

[Mephisto]

They work just fine. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[PvK]

I'll go run a test to see what's going on with the happiness mods in 1.60, and let you know.

PvK

[Rlaney]

Also check your default_Ai_designCreation file. All ships with cargo(troop transports, mine layers, etc.) have the must have ability and majority comp ability set to "Star - Unstable".

A little cut and paste error there PvK? Seems to make the ai perform a little better once changed.

[Fyron]

That is used to call for special components in the ship design. You give a component an ability, like "Star- Unstable" and then require it in the ship design. It's usually used if there are multiple varieties of a component type available, and you want the ship to use some of each type.

[PvK]

Yes, that's what it's there for. Otherwise, the AI will say "wow, look at those colony modules, they allow 1000kT of storage! I should put those on all my cargo transports! ... oh, they don't fit, so I'll wait (forever) for a ship that can use those." Etc.

PvK

[capnq]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> The AI_Construction_Facilities does have entries for homeworlds. However it's not looking for specific facilitiy names, but abilities. <hr></blockquote> Might that be intended for rebuilding after a homeworld is damaged from an attack?

[Rlaney]

Very odd. City happines modifiers set to 5 creates unhappiness. Set to -5 creates happiness. I thought someone tried and negative modifiers didn't work for that. The question is in gold the urban pacification center is set to 1. Will that cause unhappiness or not? They use the same ability so... Maybe we better tell MM about this one.

[PvK]

Yes, CapnQ, it would do that, but I'm pretty sure it also determines, to some extent, what gets built as the game is being set up.

PvK

[PvK]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Rlaney:
Very odd. City happines modifiers set to 5 creates unhappiness. Set to -5 creates happiness. I thought someone tried and negative modifiers didn't work for that. The question is in gold the urban pacification center is set to 1. Will that cause unhappiness or not? They use the same ability so... Maybe we better tell MM about this one.<hr></blockquote>

Are you sure the unhappiness was not caused by other circumstances?

I ran a test with UPC's set to +300, and it made everything jubilant immediately. I then set it to -300, and it had no effect (remained jubilant). So, this wasn't a very exhaustive test, but I assume that negative values have no effect, and positive values work, until someone takes the time to do a detailed study.

PvK

[Fyron]

No, it does not alter what facilities are built on each homeworld at game start-up. That is hard-coded, and you can't change it.

[Rlaney]

Yeah I'm sure on the negative happiness. I checked it negative and positive and the effects were definately backwards. Started new game and just ran a few turns with the homeworld start it gave me. Nothing else could have caused it. as far as the star-unstable thing... It may have been that after I changed it and loaded up my save they finished some cargo ships finally. Like I said, I know squat about moddin the ai.
How is the ai in 1.5 btw? Seem to be working good?

[ 17 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]</p>

[PvK]

I wonder about the happiness values still, because clearly a high positive value had a high positive effect. I think it needs more testing to really see what's happening.

AI in 1.5 is much improved, especially for the Amon'krie. It will build a network of colonies with generally appropriate facilities, and spread along a network of resupply depots, etc. Unless it hits too many obstacle sectors, because it still uses inefficient engines and will tend not to have enough supplies to get through these. I guess that's sort of interesting in that you can have an AI hiding out behind them, since in Proportions it won't fall too massively behind if it can't colonize as much as other players. However I will eventually make some AI that create longer-ranged ships, etc.

PvK