Questions comments and general ramblings from a new player...

[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by PDF:
Hello,
I started playing SE4 Last week and already feel somewhat addicted, I couldn't resist trying all the mods and new races I saw ... thus I started 4 games but didn't progress very far in either ...

Colonizing a new planet up to nearly-full capacity (at a given tech level) is a matter of 5-6 turns, 10 at most : send colony ship, add a pop trans (300 M population per ship, that's the USA whole population moved in amonth !! ), pop up 5 facilities at the rate of 1/turn, and in perhaps 2 game years a whole system has been colonized..
That's overly quick and easy ! And population is mainly useless, as facilities need nearly to noone to operate properly : how in hell can 10 M people produce more than 50% of what 2000 M people can do ???

Same for research : to max out RP the best way is to populate each colony with lots of Research Facilities... That really doesn't sound logical, science should need proper infrastructure, support, all what we on Earth worked for centuries to have here !

I supposed that for a long time my homeworld would give most of the empires economic output, now in a couple of years it's just an overpopulated big colony ... I know Proportion mod changes this but didn't try yet (cf above ).

And so the game tends too much towards "colony race" so as to have more planet "slots" just to put facilities, where it should be more oriented towards making in the long run viable colonies out of harsh places, IMHO that'll be more fun and challenging.

With a better economic model the game would be just *more than great*

Your thoughts ?

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Some simple changes to settings.txt can reduce these problems. Change population growth rate for example. ANd change default planet build rate to make colony development slow down.

Empire Base Planet Mineral Usage Rate := 1000
Empire Base Planet Organic Usage Rate := 1000
Empire Base Planet Radioactive Usage Rate := 1000

This makes a level III extraction facility (mineral, organic, or radioactive) take THREE turns to build on a new colony. Adding population will speed it up, but not nearly as much as with the original default build rate.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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SJ, thanks for the population weight param... If I make 1 pop weigh more than 20 kt noone will get there but will I still have a colony ? And could I populate here thereafter by sending transport ships (ie if it weights say 100 kT will a transport with 100 kT in 5 cargo comps load 1 pop or none - is the load calculated per component or globally ?)

Only other question left is what mean the "Min pop per facility" param ??

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Cargo is global. Only the total space vs total size of stuff you're putting in matters.
Your colony ships will plant an empty colony dome, and you can ship people over later, but the AIs might have a bit of trouble with that situation.

The minimum population per KT was disabled back in the SE4 Non-Gold Beta testing days. It has no effect now. (Why thy just didn't set it to zero, and leave it moddable, I don't know)

[Elowan]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
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Your colony ships will plant an empty colony dome, and you can ship people over later, but the AIs might have a bit of trouble with that situation. ...

Which begs the question: why do they have trouble with that more than they would if you actually colonized with people? I occasionally will send a long-range colony ship out minus pop - just to claim an artifact planet (typically non-breathable).

I could care less if that dome gets glassed.

[ August 18, 2002, 17:12: Message edited by: Elowan ]

[Suicide Junkie]

Basically, it will take them a while to get around to that planet with a pop transport.

A human player would make it a priority to ship pop, in order to get the planet up and running quickly.

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Basically, it will take them a while to get around to that planet with a pop transport.

A human player would make it a priority to ship pop, in order to get the planet up and running quickly.

I just don't know why the A.I. doesn't assign a high priority to this. Sometimes I'll gift a small methane rock colony (no population) to a methane ice A.I. Sometimes they send a population transport eventually, and sometimes it stays empty forever ( by forever I mean until I turn MEE and decide to glass it to stay in character). Add to that the times the A.I. won't accept it.

Dave Bowman "All these planets are yours, but leave Europa alone"

Everyone on earth "Ahh.. no thanks, we'll just stay here"

Somehow I don't think that's how 2010 was supposed to play out.

(If the quote is wrong sorry, couldn't find the exact wording)

[ August 18, 2002, 18:41: Message edited by: Arkcon ]

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by Arkcon:
Dave Bowman "All these planets are yours, but leave Europa alone"

Everyone on earth "Ahh.. no thanks, we'll just stay here"

Somehow I don't think that's how 2010 was supposed to play out.

lol