Space Food Empires!

[Captain Kwok]

Greetings.

I'm adding the balance of the stellar manipulation technologies in the next patch and would like to give them some more creative names.

Here is an example:

'Planet Discombobulator' for a planet destroying weapon. It works by inducing an anti-gravity fields that causes a planet's particles to disassociate it from one another.

Got any suggestions?

[RCCCL]

For warp point creation you could name it something like
'Warp Point Seed' and say it flings a super dense seed that rips through time and space to make a warp point.

[Captain Kwok]

Thanks for the name RCCCL. I re-named the warp point generator as 'Warp Point Seeder'.

Any other ideas out there?

[Ed Kolis]

Any chance of any sort of harvesters - of the MOO3 persuasion or otherwise?

edit: I'm thinking maybe some sort of super WMD type thing, maybe a weapon which deploys robots which devour the population of a planet?

[Captain Kwok]

While working on the new maintenance system in the VehicleSize.txt, I was thinking of ways to make carriers more likely to be used as, well, carriers.

An easy way would be to make special mounts for fighter hangers that would reduce their size when used on carrier hulls. However, since hull sizes are customized by race, this wouldn't work out so well.

So, I have made carrier hulls cheaper with a lower base maintenance cost (20% vs 25%) while being able to launch/recover fighters at a reduced rate even if all hanger bays were destroyed. They also have a slightly lower maximum speed, increased defense penalty and require 50% fighter bays.

Are the benefits enough to balance the penalties, plus encourage their regular use in the game, particularly for fighter-focused races?

[El_Phil]

Given how important speed can be, particularly in a large empire and during combat, the low maximum sped is a big penalty. If you keep the low speed make them the large fleet carriers and add faster strike carriers that have less capacity and perhaps no launch/recover if damaged.

[Captain Kwok]

Reduced speed in this case is generally 1 or 2 move points less at most. It shouldn't really matter all that much in combat, since carriers are just releasing fighters and backing off.

[Captain Kwok]

I still need some help to come up with some fun names for the remaining stellar manipulation components.

Here is what I have so far:

Space Fabric Softener: Device that weakens the structure of normal space generating a stellar storm.
Convection Inverter: Cosmic beam that dissipates stellar storms.
Gravitational Dehydrator: Fires a beam that dissipates the gravitational forces that hold a warp point together.
Warp Point Seeder: Gravitational seed that sprouts a warp point to a nearby star system.
Planet Discombobulator: Reverses a planet's gravity to cause it to fragment into pieces.
Planet Coagulator: Combines asteroids into a cohesive planetoid before initiating a biosphere generator.
Stellar Imploder: Complicated device that causes a star to collapse in on itself.

That's what I have but I still need ones for star formation, nebula formation and destruction ('Nebula Siphonicator'?), and lastly for the creation and destruction of black holes.

[Captain Kwok]

I've completed all the Stellar Manipulation technologies, here are the rest of them:

Fusion Initiator: Condenses stellar gases from a system into a massive ball that forms into a star.
Nebula Siphonicator: Siphons nebula gases into a condensed sphere and combusting them.
Gaseous Disperser: Collects all sources of gases in a system and redistributes them into a single nebula.
Black Hole Defraggler: Defraggles the core of a black hole causing it to collapse.
Gravitational Condenser: Tightly compresses all matter in a system into a single point forming a black hole.

Ringworld Core: The central component required to fully activate a ringworld.
Gravity Generator: Massive generators required to provide suitable gravity for a ringworld.
Biosphere Generator: Generators required to provide a habitable atmosphere for a ringworld.
Hyper-Density Cables: Massive bundle of cables required to bind together all the materials of a ringworld.

To build a Ringworld in the mod, you require 30 Gravity Generators (500kT each), 50 Biosphere Generators (300kT each), and 120 Hyper-Density Cables (50kT each). The construction time and costs are a bit higher than those of a Sphereworld in stock SE:IV.

There are no Sphereworlds in the mod.

[Captain Kwok]

The Space Food Empires website has been completed updated to version 0.20, which itself will be released later this week. There are only a few minor items to finish it off.

Version 0.20 will be a big update with over 80 changes alone listed in the history file, which is part of the reason why it took so long. There's a bunch of new racial traits (listed previously), a new maintenance system, and a bunch of nifty nebula images I made. Even better is that it will be the first version tested on PBW!

I've already have plans for the next version 0.21 that will introduce pollution/unhappiness elements and then another save-game buster for 0.30 that will further individualize the races.