Proportions mod: So confusing!

[PvK]

Originally posted by 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.

Well, these are mostly "playability" concerns. Ya, it can be more exciting to play a faster game. There's a lot of distance between Proportions' pacing (quite slow, but still generous compared to my sense of what would be realistic) and that of the standard set (very fast-paced, so it's actually possible to conquer and terraform hundreds of solar systems, and master all sciences, in a matter of decades). I was actually surprised that so many players liked Proportions' pacing so well. I'd expect most players to prefer something between the two, and many do, and of course people are free to mod and adjust my mod to suit their tastes, and the game settings and settings.txt can easily be used to make major adjustments.

As for some of your specific points:

* SE4 isn't galactic in scale. Even if you use a 255-system quadrant, which is a HUGE game from a gameplay perspective, 255 systems isn't very much of a galaxy. Drive out away from city lights on a clear night and check out the sky. One estimate of the number of stars in our own galaxy is 100 BILLION (100,000,000,000). This would probably take very many SE4 turns to colonize.

* SE4 is a game with roughly month-long turns, individual spaceships (and satellites, and fighters) which resolves combat down to the single weapon shot, and so on. It can take an hour or more to play each turn later in the game. The game generally starts with players having a homeworld and zero units. It's not really reasonable and realistic, if you take the time-scale literally, to expect to be able to conquer and colonize to the extent that the unmodded game set allows, in any playable amount of time. The unmodded game does allow players to fully develop and conquer a large quadrant in a matter of decades. Proportions doesn't. That's "by design." You can still have very interesting expansion and conflict in Proportions, and you could conquer and dominate all of the other players. You probably won't ever build a cutural center, but you're not supposed to. Cultural centers represent more than just the industry and physical structure of a civilization. You CAN multiply your production and research capacity through colonization, eventually. However, even that isn't necessarily required to dominate a quadrant.

* Since the time frame of a game of SE4 is limited to a few decades of game time (unless you say the turns are actually a year long, or something), what you can expect in Proportions is to be able to establish a few pretty large colonies and a fairly large number of outPosts, but to have to decide how much effort to devote to developing those, and how much to develop a military force. There can still be large-scale conflicts, and there generally are. But there is much less necessity to do lightning colonization and expand or become quickly insignifigant.

Some of the design goals of Proportions include:

To allow the game to continue with interesting goals and technologies to discover, even after many decades of play. Most technologies should usually not be researched to their highest levels, and most colonies should still have room to improve (and remain inferior to a homeworld) even after many decades.

Late in the game, the remaining undamaged homeworlds should still be the most powerful planets, but there should be some very valuable and formidable colonies. However, most planets should still be either uncolonized, or relatively undeveloped, compared to the highly populated and developed colonies. That is, if a colony is started but no particular effort is made to develop it (mainly by shipping a bunch of population there), it shouldn't have developed into a major colony just because some years have passed without any particular effort to build it up - i.e., it takes deliberate effort (population transport) to create a major colony.

PvK

[Mylon]

Why don't you just say cultural world centers aren't meant to be built at all and leave it at that? Sure, a homeworld that leaves all of its building to base space yards could maybe start turning a space port/resupply depot into a cultural world center from the second turn and it might actually see it done before the end game, but even then it would be pretty impracitcal as would take a huge number turns _after_ being built to make up for their huge cost through mineral production, research points, intel points, ect...

Even on ringworlds were conditions are always optimal and one really can drive a unmodified Honda (well, you'll still need paved roads) around, accomplishing such a task is nearly impossible.

Thinking in purely game mechanics (which, in my opinion have more say that realism, because if I wanted realism I'd play more real life), Cultural world centers are wasteful to build. Starting off with a bunch is a nice bonus, but to build one would lock a good planet's production for 500 turns and require an insane amount of resources, thus making them unpractical.

And, from another standpoint, consider that America was a colony some 300 years ago or so. People brought their culture with them and built rather quickly, about as much as population would allow. The two factors that limited America's growth were population and technology. Look how fast things grew when the railroads were built. Colonists don't loose their culture merely because they no longer are around their own culture, so if you bring along enough colonists then culture by itself is certain not a problem. The infrastructure (on the level of compactness as the colony world center) would be difficult, but you even noted how it can be done in 27 turns.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:
Why don't you just say cultural world centers aren't meant to be built at all and leave it at that?

Good question. If I didn't mention that yet, I don't remember why. I've said it on several other threads in the past.

Sure, a homeworld that leaves all of its building to base space yards could maybe start turning a space port/resupply depot into a cultural world center from the second turn and it might actually see it done before the end game, but even then it would be pretty impracitcal as would take a huge number turns _after_ being built to make up for their huge cost through mineral production, research points, intel points, ect...

Yep. I guess I figured people would realize this as soon as they saw their homeworld reporting 100 years to build one, and colonies reporting "Never" to build one.

Even on ringworlds were conditions are always optimal and one really can drive a unmodified Honda (well, you'll still need paved roads) around, accomplishing such a task is nearly impossible.

Within a few decades, yes, as intended.

Thinking in purely game mechanics (which, in my opinion have more say that realism, because if I wanted realism I'd play more real life), Cultural world centers are wasteful to build. Starting off with a bunch is a nice bonus, but to build one would lock a good planet's production for 500 turns and require an insane amount of resources, thus making them unpractical.

Yes, quite so. Creating a new culture is not a practical path for the relatively short period of conflict and exploration represented by an SE4 game.

And, from another standpoint, consider that America was a colony some 300 years ago or so. People brought their culture with them and built rather quickly, about as much as population would allow. The two factors that limited America's growth were population and technology. Look how fast things grew when the railroads were built. Colonists don't loose their culture merely because they no longer are around their own culture, so if you bring along enough colonists then culture by itself is certain not a problem. The infrastructure (on the level of compactness as the colony world center) would be difficult, but you even noted how it can be done in 27 turns.

Sure, but again, what culture did they bring? European culture. They effectively destroyed the existing culture of the existing population, brought their own European culture, and developed it a bit, and built lots of housing and infrastructure, over the span of 300 years and with hundreds of millions of people and untold millions of tons of machinery and materials. They consumed many times their own mass in organic materials, massive amounts of energy and mineral resources, etc. The conditions were ideal.

I'm not sure I've clearly explained the difference between culture and industry. I don't think it can be directly modelled in SE4, but Proportions is my best shot at an abstraction of it within the limits of that game system.

I do allow building industry at a very generous rate (you can build the productive capacity of a cultural center on a colony world in well under 5 years, given enough population and facility slots). The reason I have this take up much more space is to represent the difficulty of building net-efficient infrastructure on inhospitable alien worlds. Cultural Centers offer much more concentrated (on a fac slot basis) production largely because of the native conditions, but also because of cultural, logistical, and infrastructure considerations.

In addition to all of that, however, cultural centers represent many necessary elements that are not physical and can't be physically mass-produced and duplicated for a multiplicative effect, the way the game program would do if I made the build costs less. As I've mentioned below at least twice, reasearch facilities really should not add their points together, and should not be shiftable every turn to concentrate on whatever project the Emperor wants. Also, the ability to get billions of intelligent and educated people to work towards a common goal requires an outstanding culture with very impressive social structures, government, religion, system of raising and educating children, economic systems, and all of the other human activities that make these things worthwhile and possible in the first place: arts, music, literature, philosophy, romance, entertainment, communities, toys, crafts, sports, fashion, cuisine, tradition, lore, and many others. It can't be duplicated by droids overnight. You may be able to duplicate the same stuff (see Wall-Mart, McDonalds, Safeway, pop music, Twinkies, pulp fiction, Hollywood spin-offs, "Next Generation" TV shows, etc...), but that's mostly just repeating existing cultural works. "You already have a similar quadrant-wide ability."

PvK

[jimbob]

(see Wall-Mart, McDonalds, Safeway, pop music, Twinkies, pulp fiction, Hollywood spin-offs, "Next Generation" TV shows, etc...), but that's mostly just repeating existing cultural works.

Heretic! Wal-Mart IS culture.
Repent or we will grind you up and make you into McNuggets.

[Mylon]

Yes, it may have taken America 300 years to get where we have today, but also consider:

1) It isn't a set thing. You can't say 300 years alter America has finally achieved "cultural center" status. Whos to say they didn't achieve it with the invent of the automobile? Or the railroads?
2) Production is skewed by the fact that only one thing can be produced at a time. Such infrastructure as a city doesn't spring up overnight, but it also isn't the only focus of the people.
3) Cost is also skewed because colonies are self sustaining in nature. True, America has maybe consumed its own weight in organics, but sustaining the colonists is free in SEIV because they produce enough naturally to take care of themselves. It is production facilities or other things that cost extra.
4) They're also evolving things. It would be reasonable that if a new mining technique is discovered you shouldn't have to build half of the cultural center over again just to refine one part. The 50% cost factor may be unavoidable, but the tremendus cost of that very 50% assures that it will never happen (assuming multiple levels of cultural facilities).

[dogscoff]

1) It isn't a set thing. You can't say 300 years alter America has finally achieved "cultural center" status. Whos to say they didn't achieve it with the invent of the automobile? Or the railroads?

Who's to say they acheived it at all?

*Dogscoff falls over laughing while all the Americans present pelt him with half-eaten Big Macs...

[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:
Yes, it may have taken America 300 years to get where we have today, but also consider:

1) It isn't a set thing. You can't say 300 years alter America has finally achieved "cultural center" status. Whos to say they didn't achieve it with the invent of the automobile? Or the railroads?

Since I defined cultural centers, I would say that the automobile would be a tech level achievement, not a facility, and that railroads were just part of the transportation infrastructure. They don't have that much to do with culture, although they may be a part of it, affect it, and certainly they would never have appeared without an advanced (essentially, European) civilization. I would say that building more than two facilities on a colony, or building a large facility like a resource production "complex", probably does involve developing a lot of transportation infrastructure, including the space-age equivalents of automobiles and railroads. These also will require tremendous amounts of design and engineering to develop survivable and effective Versions customized to operate in each planetary environment.

However, your question seems to be from a perspective that is still missing what I've been trying to explain about what culture is, and why there are cultural center facilities, and why they can't be built quickly. It's not that you couldn't, with a huge amount of work and materials, build the infrastructure of a civilized continent in a couple of decades. It's just that this would not be well represented by another cultural center facility in SE4. This is because culture contributes things that the duplication of does not result in an additive effect, the way the SE4 game engine would add them together. 1000 scientists will not develop the same technology 10 times as quickly as 100 scientists working from the same principles. Not to mention that building a bunch of lab space on a distant planet is not going to have an direct additive effect, either. Who here believes that in the future, we won't have enough real estate for all the science labs we need, and that by colonizing Mars and filling it with science labs, we could triple the rate of human scientific accomplishment, compared to having the labs and scientists stay on Earth with the same budget?

And that's only the research part.

2) Production is skewed by the fact that only one thing can be produced at a time. Such infrastructure as a city doesn't spring up overnight, but it also isn't the only focus of the people.

Yes, that's very true. Unfortunately for the golden ideal of completely accurate simulation, that's the way SE4 production works.

3) Cost is also skewed because colonies are self sustaining in nature. True, America has maybe consumed its own weight in organics, but sustaining the colonists is free in SEIV because they produce enough naturally to take care of themselves. It is production facilities or other things that cost extra.

Also true, and again, unfortunately there's no great way to do this in SE4 except to give the facilities large costs, or possibly to give them negative resource production (though this latter idea is marred by the obligatory multiplication by planet value).

4) They're also evolving things. It would be reasonable that if a new mining technique is discovered you shouldn't have to build half of the cultural center over again just to refine one part. The 50% cost factor may be unavoidable, but the tremendus cost of that very 50% assures that it will never happen (assuming multiple levels of cultural facilities).

Yep. Although, what you can do is build other facilities from the higher tech on the same planet, such as robotoid facotories, value improvement plants, computer complexes, etc. These have multiplicative effects with whatever else is on the planet, and don't have to have massive costs. This is probably what I should add more of, rather than struggling with the cost/upgrade system provided by SE4, which doesn't leave me much flexibility beyond what I've already done.

PvK