Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
I wonder what that does in a infinite resources game?

Phoenix-D<hr></blockquote>
Well, I haven't tested that, but I would guess the same thing standard resource facilities do in a infinite resource game. It would subtract the resources from the empire total, but not change the planet's value.

And the amount of resources subtracted would be factored by the value of the planet. That part is a little wierd, but I'm not sure how you would get around it. Basically a research facility would cost less to operate on a mineral poor planet than on a mineral rich one. Kind of the opposite of what you would think really. Something to keep in mind, but the effect should be small I would think.

Geoschmo

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Rlaney:
On the cultural centers I just changed the big one. I wanted to set it so that it can't be built but just exists on the homeworld. May have to make it associated with a tech that is unattainable. What file controls what buildings are on the homeworld at the start anyway?<hr></blockquote>The only way to do that I think would be have a different set of data files for the game startup and then change to play the game. If the tech is unatainable, then noone will ahve it by default and wont be able to have one on theri homeworld, I believe.

No file controls the starting facs. It's hardcoded. But you can play around with it by changin the abilities of the various facilities so the game chosses them.

Geoschmo

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

Yeah, for finite resources I may have to tone down cultural centers a bit. My purpose for trying to add maintenance to research and intel is to prevent larger empires from overwhleming smaller ones with sheer research ability. Kind of make a smaller empire a more viable option in the game. There is a restrictions line in the facilities.txt but it is supposedly not used. That must be hardcoded too.

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by geoschmo:
...

No file controls the starting facs. It's hardcoded. But you can play around with it by changin the abilities of the various facilities so the game chosses them.

Geoschmo<hr></blockquote>

I thought it was controlled by the AI planet building file, under the Homeworld entry - I was pretty sure that determined it.

As for preventing building cultural centers on colonies, I don't see why you'd want to, since they are about the same as colony cultural centers, and both of them are so costly that it's nearly impossible to actually build them, anway.

PvK

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

My only reason for taking them out was that I toned down the regular ones a little to keep them from strip-mining a planet immediately and I wanted to make the main ones kind of like a palace or Empire Capital bonus. I love your mod but I'm tryin to adjust it to my preferred playing style(finite resources). I have no intention of posting it as a mod, but if I did I would certainly get your permission first(and certainly give you credit) since I'm just making adjustments to all your hard work. Thanks for all your hard work btw.

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:


I thought it was controlled by the AI planet building file, under the Homeworld entry - I was pretty sure that determined it.
<hr></blockquote>

Ok, well correct, sort of. The AI_Construction_Facilities does have entries for homeworlds. However it's not looking for specific facilitiy names, but abilities. So I suppose you could play with that to a point and get a different makeup on the homeworlds. I haven't tried it myself. I thought I remembered someone saying they did and it had no effect. But I could be remembering that wrong. Either way I guess it depends on what the goal is.

Also the game does have some hardcode overides I know about for sure. For example in a high tech start it won't build research fac's, even thoguh they are listed in the file.

Geoschmo

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

Rlaney, don't worry - I'm happy you're enjoying Proportions and are trying new things out! It would be cool if you could get it to work ok with limited resources - I just assumed it wouldn't work.

It sounds to me like you could use the resource improvement abilities to compensate for the drain on homeworlds. I guess ideally, you would want to make the drain just slightly higher than the replenishment, but it will be hard to balance, I think, also if an empire takes advanced storage techniques or reduced planet exploitation, it will throw off your balancing.

I had intended to include resource depletion in the larger Version of the mod (Foundations), by using negative resource improvement abilities while playing an "infinite resources" game. That would give a much more realistic pace to resource depletion than the "finite resources" mechanic, and it wouldn't throw away the extraction rate modifiers the way that "finite resources" does. The only problem is that, at least when I tested it back around 1.57 or so, setting negative values on resource improvement had no effect. I explained this in a report to MM, but I haven't bothered to test to see if he actually made a change - there is no note in the history.txt file about a change, but not all changes appear there. I'd be obliged if you'd like to give it a test. Make a facility with resource improvement at -50 or so and then sit it on a planet for over a year, and see if the resource levels go down at all. If it does... it'll be really cool. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

In finite it takes resource from your pool and puts them back into the planet instead of just taking them away. I fixed the cultural thing sort of... I got rid of them. Mostly they duplicated bonuses on the cities. I made the cities about as powerful as equivalent level facilities, i.e. resource I intel I storage I...also I changed the resourece to solar generation and set it pretty high for the cities. One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage. I worked around this by adding shields to all facilities. 250 for level I, 500 level II, 750 level III...with some exceptions. Resupply depots are 1000. Yards are 1000, 2000, and 3000 and cities are the same. This means it takes a big fleet to glass a planet and shields go up as infrastructure increases. Now if you can make an AI that will use troops and try to invade planets instead of just throwing ships at them it'll be pretty close to perfect. I tested 10 high tech escorts against a home planet and they couldn't take the shields down with wave motion guns... But this was a homeworld with 8 cities I think so that kind of balances. Remains to be seen how difficult conquering a less developed colony world will be.

I like the propulsion/mass relation. If only we could set ships with no supplies to move every other turn or even every 3rd it would make supplies an important part of the game.


To try and balance the higher cost of colony ship I had to set the solar gen on cities pretty high so it's hard in the begining to field more than maybe 3 escorts and 1 colony ship but that prevents massive expansion in the early game and makes building up a good planet more important

[ 16 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]</p>

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

I like your suggestion to add "shield" values to facilities, although I don't think it should be impossible to bLast planets with the right weapons. However I don't understand what you mean by:

"One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage."

What do you mean?

The AI will use troops, sometimes.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>If only we could set ships with no supplies to move every other turn or even every 3rd it would make supplies an important part of the game.<hr></blockquote>

I find that supplies are very important in Proportions. A ship with ion engines mark I and no extra supply storage only has a one-way range of 19 sectors! In 1.5 the situation is even more interesting, with some of the suggestions from Dogscoff and others worked in, so that there are two grades of all marks of engines with different output and efficiency - with capital ships you have to trade off range against speed, and the difference in speed between small and large ships is greater.

PvK

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by PvK:
I like your suggestion to add "shield" values to facilities, although I don't think it should be impossible to bLast planets with the right weapons. However I don't understand what you mean by:

Not impossible, just difficult. I made all planetary weapons (bombs) skip shields. I could tone it down more but I hate the AI just coming in and glassing planet with no attempt at conquest.

"One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage."

What do you mean?

damage to kill 1 pop= 100

escort, 1 depleeted uranium cannon= 100 damage against unshielded planet. Oddly enough the anti-planet drone warheads seem to work correctly.

I find that supplies are very important in Proportions. A ship with ion engines mark I and no extra supply storage only has a one-way range of 19 sectors! In 1.5 the situation is even more interesting, with some of the suggestions from Dogscoff and others worked in, so that there are two grades of all marks of engines with different output and efficiency - with capital ships you have to trade off range against speed, and the difference in speed between small and large ships is greater.

Oh it works great at higher tech but low tech-low thrust engines give at least one move supplied or not.

PvK<hr></blockquote>

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

sorry for that mess, still tryin to figure out the quotes thing on here.

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

""One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage."

What do you mean?"

It means that weapons will always kill at least one population per hit. Setting it to 1000 will prevent any weapon (except mounted napalm) from killing more than ONE pop per hit, but won't prevent them from doing damage.

I think.

Phoenix-D

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

Oh, thanks Phoenix... that's... interesting. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

Hey PvK. I think I may have found a glitch in proportions. Check the happiness.txt file and make sure that the modifiers that are supposed to make people happy have a - in front of them. I'm expanding and building cities and people are just gettin more and more pisssed. LOL Looked at the happiness file and all are set to cause negative responses.

nevermind, My mistake. lookin at the wrong mod file.

[ 16 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]</p>

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

They work just fine. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

I'll go run a test to see what's going on with the happiness mods in 1.60, and let you know.

PvK

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

Also check your default_Ai_designCreation file. All ships with cargo(troop transports, mine layers, etc.) have the must have ability and majority comp ability set to "Star - Unstable".

A little cut and paste error there PvK? Seems to make the ai perform a little better once changed.

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

That is used to call for special components in the ship design. You give a component an ability, like "Star- Unstable" and then require it in the ship design. It's usually used if there are multiple varieties of a component type available, and you want the ship to use some of each type.

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

Yes, that's what it's there for. Otherwise, the AI will say "wow, look at those colony modules, they allow 1000kT of storage! I should put those on all my cargo transports! ... oh, they don't fit, so I'll wait (forever) for a ship that can use those." Etc.

PvK

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> The AI_Construction_Facilities does have entries for homeworlds. However it's not looking for specific facilitiy names, but abilities. <hr></blockquote> Might that be intended for rebuilding after a homeworld is damaged from an attack?

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

Very odd. City happines modifiers set to 5 creates unhappiness. Set to -5 creates happiness. I thought someone tried and negative modifiers didn't work for that. The question is in gold the urban pacification center is set to 1. Will that cause unhappiness or not? They use the same ability so... Maybe we better tell MM about this one.

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

Yes, CapnQ, it would do that, but I'm pretty sure it also determines, to some extent, what gets built as the game is being set up.

PvK

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Rlaney:
Very odd. City happines modifiers set to 5 creates unhappiness. Set to -5 creates happiness. I thought someone tried and negative modifiers didn't work for that. The question is in gold the urban pacification center is set to 1. Will that cause unhappiness or not? They use the same ability so... Maybe we better tell MM about this one.<hr></blockquote>

Are you sure the unhappiness was not caused by other circumstances?

I ran a test with UPC's set to +300, and it made everything jubilant immediately. I then set it to -300, and it had no effect (remained jubilant). So, this wasn't a very exhaustive test, but I assume that negative values have no effect, and positive values work, until someone takes the time to do a detailed study.

PvK

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

No, it does not alter what facilities are built on each homeworld at game start-up. That is hard-coded, and you can't change it.

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

Yeah I'm sure on the negative happiness. I checked it negative and positive and the effects were definately backwards. Started new game and just ran a few turns with the homeworld start it gave me. Nothing else could have caused it. as far as the star-unstable thing... It may have been that after I changed it and loaded up my save they finished some cargo ships finally. Like I said, I know squat about moddin the ai.
How is the ai in 1.5 btw? Seem to be working good?

[ 17 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]</p>

Re: Colony ships, for sale cheap!
 

I wonder about the happiness values still, because clearly a high positive value had a high positive effect. I think it needs more testing to really see what's happening.

AI in 1.5 is much improved, especially for the Amon'krie. It will build a network of colonies with generally appropriate facilities, and spread along a network of resupply depots, etc. Unless it hits too many obstacle sectors, because it still uses inefficient engines and will tend not to have enough supplies to get through these. I guess that's sort of interesting in that you can have an AI hiding out behind them, since in Proportions it won't fall too massively behind if it can't colonize as much as other players. However I will eventually make some AI that create longer-ranged ships, etc.

PvK