Re: Latest V. of Proportions?
 

I don't think the AI will freak out, depending on your definition of the term. It should just go about its usual business, although I haven't tested hidden warp points or sphere worlds. I would expect it to be completely ignorant of planets with abandoned facilities. I don't know if the AI respects hidden warp point visibility or not.

The only thing that might throw the AI off a little is if you give it tech that it isn't programmed to use well, but that could be adjusted.

You could start in 2.1 and upgradee to 2.1 without problems, I think, though I am still meaning to release 2.2 tonight.

PvK

Re: Latest V. of Proportions?
 

Swell. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif , can't wait.

I guess what I meant by freak out was will game balance really, really be thrown off.

I'm trying to simulate a galaxy in which not all aliens are considered equal in the beginning. You know a few older races, much more intelligent and have been around for a while colonizing a system or two; One or two really intelligent ones (preferably neutrals that don't leave their system but are super intelligent); and the rest as wolflings or the folk that are just begging to explore the cosmos and are still newbies. However; with careful manipulation of treaties, and the aquistion of a few choice technologies, and real estate - a wolfling race that is fully capable of becoming a galactic power ie: the United States just before WWII, "Star Treks" Federation, "Infinity Shores" Terran Wolfling Race, "Babylon 5's" Terran Race.
Blah, Blah, I'm sure you get the idea.

Thanks.

Re: Latest V. of Proportions?
 

I think it's quite possible to do that in Proportions, especially to have some empires who have developed colonies for a long time, with others who haven't. The main reason is that colony development and research take a lot longer time to develop to excessively high levels, while ship and construction are still relatively quick, though capped by maintenance costs (though, it could be interesting to have one of your older empires have a large stockpile of mothballed ships, if a human were going to play them).

A big research advantage could lead to some balance issues, I suppose, depending on what the older races researched, and whether they were going to be a player race or an AI race. However, since in Proportions the tech tree is steeped AND it isn't possbile to multiply your research rate they way the default set allows, the head start races will only get so far ahead, unless you set research cost to Low or do a ten-homeworld start. I think I'd recommend single-planet start with high tech cost - this should naturally keep anyone from getting really high tech stuff even after a long time head start.

Another concept is to have one or a few empires that have fairly large widespead colonies, but who aren't in a good position to defend them all.

Anyway, it sounds like it could be a really interesting scenario, and I'd hope it would work well. The more human players, the better, though, as always.

PvK

Re: Latest V. of Proportions?
 

One way to do something sort of like this is to set Racial Points for New Player (Set Up/Player Settings) to 5000, then under Players/Add Existing use races without all their points spent for the younger races. You can Edit the added races to fine tune them to whatever strength you want. This won't give you large differences in tech levels, though you could tweak the Intelligence Ratings to make some races research faster or slower.

Re: Latest V. of Proportions?
 

Another idea would be to tweak the AI on the "new" races to not build or research anything. Then you could use the auto-turn generator to advance the game. Well, there are lots of approaches. Sounds like tnarg is doing a lot by hand, to get his scenario set up in a specific way.

PvK