Proportions mod: So confusing!

[PvK]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

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If all you care about is the infrastructure, sure.

That's all that matters for producing materials and constructing ships. Such things would require next to no manpower for an advanced civilization like those in SE4.

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With the right technology, that's true. However, notice you say "an advanced civilization like those in SE4." What represents that advanced civilization? In standard SE4, nothing. In Proportions, it's represented by the cultural centers. Without the cultural centers, you can have lots of industry, but who's going to provide the authority and direction to put it to use for an empire? A real civilization is not going to "run out of room" at home, and "just need some land to build more factories", or at least, not to the extent abstractly represented by SE4.

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Of course, on the homeworld, there is the advantage that it is the correct atmosphere (composition, pressure, and weather), radiation levels, bioshpere, gravity, and temperature. Overcoming these is part of the massive challenge of creating a productive colony on an alien planet.

All of which are mostly irrelevant to automated processors, which already exist on ships, and are far more effective than a facility that covers half a continent.

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Technology is definitely not immune to environmental conditions. Try moving a Honda factory to Venus, and see how well it operates. Could one develop technology to do so? Yes, but it would require time, and experimentation with prototypes in that particular environment. A planet consists of many different environments, and it takes years of study to understand them, let alone to develop technologies that function well in them. All of that takes time, intelligent research, and a lot of expense, especially if the planet is years away from your civilization even in the fastest ships your empire can produce.

I can't think of any facility in Proportions, except for cultural facilities, which would cover half a continent.

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A Proportions Cultural center represents more than simply industry and infrastructure, however. It represents the culture, society, history, art, drama, economy, as well as the environment that makes it possible to run and sustain large-scale production, reasearch, and so on so that the planet actually contributes to an empire rather than sucking massive resources just to keep it in existence.

A planet only requires large amounts of resources from another planet if it cannot produce enough food to feed the population. We're talking about completely untouched planets, with material resources similar to Earth. There's no real reason to send anything to the planet past the initial colony set up materials unless the planet is extremely poor.

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That's completely untrue. Try going to any of the planets in Earth's solar system. Try to find anything to eat. Try to find any consumer goods. Try to find breathable air. Try to find building materials. Try to find technological components. Try to find medicine. Ok, so maybe there's plenty of rock and unrefined iron. If you're lucky, you might be able to develop a process for gathering and processing some frozen indigenous water. How many million people were you planning on moving to this planet? What does it take to keep them alive and willing to be there? You expect them to breed and raise children educated there? You don't want them to form their own independant government? Also, for everything they need, how much does it cost to build, maintain and operate the fleet of transport equipment required to get all that stuff there?

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The ability in itself to multiply your empire's abilities in a few years' time by colonizing alien worlds and turning them into homeworld clones is exactly what Proportions' design premise rejects. Actually attempting such in reality would, it seems to me, lead to complete bankruptcy, so Proportions is actually still quite generous in this from a realism standpoint, in that it can actually still be very worthwhile to do so.

If creating colonies that increase production by an order of magnitude bankrupts the empire, then Britain would have been bankrupted a hundred times over by now. Colonies represent untapped resources, and beyond a very short setup period would easily produce more than they take at the tech levels reached in SE4.

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How is a colony on a distant alien world going to increase production by an order of magnitude overnight? It seems to me it will mainly involve massive technological and logistical problems, which will at _least_ take a few decades to get up to speed. In Proportions, after just one decade, colonies can provide a major increase in production and other abilities. That seems pretty optimistic to me.

PvK

[Skulky]

Wow, a real controversy, or rather heated discussion, my question is slightly simpler: Is there any pointin researching the tech areas like colonial development and large support facilites? Also, can i get rid of my space port and resupply facs on my homeworld(s)?

I think it'd be great if you were to outline some of the basic strategies and mechanics of a mod like this. Anything where fundamental gameplay is changed--(which is a great thing, i'm falling in love with proportions over PBW even, i put on medium events and im having a tough time just expanding, and come some star exploding or plauging event i could have some real trouble)--a short (500-1000 word) manual would be really helpful.

thanks

[PvK]

Thanks for the feedback, Skulky!

Originally posted by Skulky:
... Is there any pointin researching the tech areas like colonial development ...

If you want to try to maximize the production of a good colony world, yes. It gives you the larger city types, although in some cases there are multiple prerequisites involved. It is also there so you can decide NOT to research it, in order to control the size of facilities you will upgrade to, since SE4 always only offers the largest city to upgrade to, and you might not want to try upgrading to a Megalopolis, or something. AI's can also use this to limit what they try to build.

... and large support facilites?

These are mainly useful for military bases on small inhospitable planets. They allow you to add some extra deployment space to a depot or spaceport, which on a domed colony can make a difference in the amount of garrison you can deploy there, without using a whole facility slot on a "Cargo Storage" facility. You might prefer not to have these more expensive Versions showing up when you have "Show Only Latest" toggled on, though, so the tech area there as an option for preference.

Also, can i get rid of my space port and resupply facs on my homeworld(s)?

Yes. Those are entirely redundant, and their slots should be used for other nifty facilities.

I think it'd be great if you were to outline some of the basic strategies and mechanics of a mod like this. Anything where fundamental gameplay is changed--(which is a great thing, i'm falling in love with proportions over PBW even, i put on medium events and im having a tough time just expanding, and come some star exploding or plauging event i could have some real trouble)--a short (500-1000 word) manual would be really helpful.

Ok, I'll see if I can find time and inspiration to do that. I've been pretty busy lately, though - I hoped to get a new Version out, but am still mulling over some ideas (mainly mount stuff).

PvK

[Mylon]

Originally posted by PvK:
500 turns or 500 years? I have an H.I. race in a current game, and on a planet with 7 million colonists and NO space yard, it will build a CC in 400 years. On one with 60 million people and NO space yard, 260 years. On one with 30 million and a level I space yard, 184.7 years. If you've got a colony that can build a cultural center in only 500 turns (50 years), then maybe I should increase the time required.

Because, as I've said recently on this thread before, a cultural center represents a whole civilization, and mass-producing McDonalds and Wall Mart (and strip mines and industry) doesn't count. All that does is add industry (and blandness) to an existing civilization.

No civilization can be created in 50 years. Cities and industry, maybe. Civilizations, no.

50 years or 500 turns. Guess what? That was my homeworld that was telling me this. Personally, I think you may be focusing a little too much on making it realistic. A ringworld can be constructed in about 25 turns in vanilla SEIV and can easily take about 200 turns or to fill with just facilities, not including cargo or whatnot. 50 turns seems reasonable for a well developed alien world to build something on the order of a cultural center, while 500 turns seems awfully long for even a homeworld.

[Graeme Dice]

With the right technology, that's true. However, notice you say "an advanced civilization like those in SE4." What represents that advanced civilization? In standard SE4, nothing. In Proportions, it's represented by the cultural centers. Without the cultural centers, you can have lots of industry, but who's going to provide the authority and direction to put it to use for an empire?

In standard SE4 the advanced civilization is represented by the facilities, after all, it's not going to take more than 10 million or so people in a single city to exploit most of the planet.

A real civilization is not going to "run out of room" at home, and "just need some land to build more factories", or at least, not to the extent abstractly represented by SE4.

I would think that all civilizations would do so at some point when their population grows beyond a standard point.

Technology is definitely not immune to environmental conditions. Try moving a Honda factory to Venus, and see how well it operates. Could one develop technology to do so? Yes, but it would require time, and experimentation with prototypes in that particular environment.

All that it would take to operate a Honda plant on Venus is a pressure dome. Venus has nearly the same gravity as Earth, so the machinery can be identical.

A planet consists of many different environments, and it takes years of study to understand them, let alone to develop technologies that function well in them. All of that takes time, intelligent research, and a lot of expense, especially if the planet is years away from your civilization even in the fastest ships your empire can produce.

At the start of the game, a ship can cross a solar system in two months. In the 1500's, a sailing ship could cross the Atlantic in two months. Futuristic explorers aren't going to be slower than ancient imperialists.

I can't think of any facility in Proportions, except for cultural facilities, which would cover half a continent.

Let's say Earth is the model for a medium sized planet, with about 20 facilities on the available land. That's equivalent to a single facility using just slightly less land than all of the U.S.

That's completely untrue. Try going to any of the planets in Earth's solar system. Try to find anything to eat. Try to find any consumer goods. Try to find breathable air.

There are plenty of planets in SE4 that have breathable atmospheres.

Try to find building materials. Try to find technological components. Try to find medicine. Ok, so maybe there's plenty of rock and unrefined iron. If you're lucky, you might be able to develop a process for gathering and processing some frozen indigenous water. How many million people were you planning on moving to this planet?

I was thinking about 10,000 to start, and give them about a decade or two to get the planet to the infrastructure to the point where it's not much more of a problem than building more houses.

[quote]What does it take to keep them alive and willing to be there? You expect them to breed and raise children educated there? You don't want them to form their own independant government? Also, for everything they need, how much does it cost to build, maintain and operate the fleet of transport equipment required to get all that stuff there?

How is a colony on a distant alien world going to increase production by an order of magnitude overnight? It seems to me it will mainly involve massive technological and logistical problems, which will at _least_ take a few decades to get up to speed. In Proportions, after just one decade, colonies can provide a major increase in production and other abilities. That seems pretty optimistic to me.

It seems very pessimistic to me. Remember that a single robo-miner has better mineral extraction performance than a mineral mine that covers the continental U.S.

[Mylon]

Keep in mind that 500 turn figure was a for a rance with a 45% bonus to space yard construction. Even if it was 50 turns for a hardy industrialist, how many would you expect to see? They'd still cost 240kT of materials (!) and drain a significant amount of resources from the empire. At 50 turns each, seeing homeworld clones wouldn't be very likely, since it would still take 900 turns to build as many cultural centers. 90 years may seem a too little to reproduce what Earth has done, but consider this for playability. Earth has had 100 year long wars, maybe some longer ones, but a vanilla game can easily be resolved in 50 years or less. Isn't that a little fast for a war of galatic scale?

Heck, now that I think about it, even 50 turns seems a little long.

[ September 24, 2002, 15:58: Message edited by: Mylon ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:

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Originally posted by PvK:
500 turns or 500 years? I have an H.I. race in a current game, and on a planet with 7 million colonists and NO space yard, it will build a CC in 400 years. On one with 60 million people and NO space yard, 260 years. On one with 30 million and a level I space yard, 184.7 years. If you've got a colony that can build a cultural center in only 500 turns (50 years), then maybe I should increase the time required.

Because, as I've said recently on this thread before, a cultural center represents a whole civilization, and mass-producing McDonalds and Wall Mart (and strip mines and industry) doesn't count. All that does is add industry (and blandness) to an existing civilization.

No civilization can be created in 50 years. Cities and industry, maybe. Civilizations, no.

50 years or 500 turns. Guess what? That was my homeworld that was telling me this. Personally, I think you may be focusing a little too much on making it realistic. A ringworld can be constructed in about 25 turns in vanilla SEIV and can easily take about 200 turns or to fill with just facilities, not including cargo or whatnot. 50 turns seems reasonable for a well developed alien world to build something on the order of a cultural center, while 500 turns seems awfully long for even a homeworld.

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IF you're just talking about building a bunch of shopping malls, condominiums, infrastructure, factories, and labs on a continental scale, fine, sure; and IF it's on a planet as hospitable as a homeworld, which happens to have a spare continent which is habitable but for some reason has nothing on it; THEN ok, sure, if you have massive amounts of construction equipment and building materials and so on available, and you're people are talented at building, maybe possibly 5 years might be possible, I guess. I think 50 is more like it.

However, that's not what's happening in the game situation. On a homeworld, the nice habitable continents are FULL. Ok, so you can try to build a new living area in the polar regions, or underwater, or something. Look how flourishing the Earth colonies in Alaska and Siberia are... And, it's probably going to be vastly easier to do THAT than to build things and inhabit an alien world far from the homeworld. If you're replacing a destroyed cultural center on the homeworld, the expense and time represent the massive cost and effort of dealing with hundreds of millions of casualties, irradiated land, and so on. Again, it's not like you have a nice flat grass field and 10 billion tons of construction materials, and 100 million bulldozers on hand.

Even so, that's only talking about building the physical part of a cultural center.

What are you imagining a cultural center is? I get the feeling you and Graeme aren't considering or accepting that there is more to a culture than a physical carbon copy.

If you just want the production and research equivalent of a cultural center, you CAN accomplish this in a much shorter period of time. A CC gives 2900 production, 1000 research, and 300 intel. With 15 resource facilities, 10 research facilities, and 2 intel facilities, you can get 200 greater output than that. With a good colonial population and construction yard, these can each be built in one turn, with a total time required of 27 turns = 2.7 years. This is just at tech level I, too. So, YES, it IS possible even in the existing game, to just mass produce facilities and get the equivalent of another cultural center's production, in under 3 years (not counting the shipyard itself, or the time to get the population there, whatever proportion of biological or mechanical labor this represents for your particular empire).

Of course, you'll need a Huge colony world of your atmosphere to get that all on one colony world, but that's how I represent the effects of the planet being completely incompatible with your base race's natural environment, and the massive catalog of other details that would be involved in trying to turn an alien planet into a carbon copy of one's home planet. By upgrading and replacing the basic facilities with complexes, megacomplexes, cultural faciltiies, etc, this represents accomplishing the necessary work of making the transition, and developing things besides just factories and labs.

PvK