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Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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PvK |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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PvK |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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Ya, I suppose they could be a little easier - at least the colony Versions. Quote:
_Value_ improvement doesn't necessarily have anything to do with gravity (if it did, it should require gravitational technology) or atmosphere. And yes, it's too bad that SE4 makes planetary conditions all on the same random distribution, and with such limited effects. Judging from the one observable solar system we have in real life, we'd have to have a lot more smog before Earth will be less hospitable than any of the other planets... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ... still, as with so many things in the game, conditions don't have to be taken literally, or on parity between different types of planets. For instance, an unpleasant homeworld could mean that there is room for artificial improvement, whereas an unpleasant colony world could mean below-average from the standpoint of an alien world. That's what I assumed in thinking of Proportions mod: the reason it is so hard to build things on an alien world is largely because it's going to be extremely inhospitable, just because it will be such different conditions from any your race was used to. Quote:
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. Quote:
PvK |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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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. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 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. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 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? Quote:
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 |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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 |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
Thanks for the feedback, Skulky!
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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. Quote:
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. Quote:
Yes. Those are entirely redundant, and their slots should be used for other nifty facilities. Quote:
PvK |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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[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? Quote:
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Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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 ] |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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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 |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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In Proportions, yes you can do this, and it can make a lot of sense from a miltary/industrial point of view - move a bunch of population (representing mainly construction equipment and droids, if you like) to a colony, build a construction yard to represent setting up local construction infrastructure, and then fill it up with simple facilities, and leave 10 million or so population there. That's an efficient technique in Proportions. Where we differ, is that you seem to think that that is all that can be done with a planet, or that terraforming and civilizing are trivial and pointless additions. My opinion is that developing a planet from a workshop into a homeworld equivalent evolves many orders of magnitude more. The return on investment is much more shallow, though the potential per planet is eventually greater. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm not questioning whether it happens at all, but the extent and proportions to which it happens, and the costs, effects, and time involved. Personally, I don't think, for example, that say, Oxford University's contribution to the advancement of Earth's technology and other intellectual fields (yes, there are many others) would be doubled if we could only find another few square Km somewhere to build a replica. Do you? For another example, suppose we find a really rich iron or even petrolium deposit on Mars - how cost-effective do you think it's going to be to develop an extraction plant and transport infrastructure to take advantage of this? How many years did it take to develop the unmanned probe to Mars that crashed because someone had a math error converting Imperial units to Metric, and how much did that cost? Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's a huge over-simplification, it seems to me. For just a few examples: You need to develop a pressure dome that can withstand the particular conditions of that environment, meaning you have to find out exactly what that environment is like (pressure, temperature, chemical effects, weather phenomena and patterns, volcanic activity, indigenous life forms), meaning you have to guess and then establish an outpost to conduct research, then develop and produce the dome and required life support for it. (For example, it took Earth eleven years and ten probes to get Venera 8 to operate on the surface of Venus. Two years later, Venera 9, and three years later, Venera 10, each succeeded in returning single photographs, before the specially-designed-to-survive probes were destroyed after about 50 minutes each. That was 1975. Since the first probe attempt in 1961, it's been 41 years [~410 SE4 turns], and we still haven't landed anyone on Venus or Mars, let alone planned to build Hondas there.) Then, your Earth-based factory is not a self-contained unit. It takes advantage of Earth infrastructure such as power plants, communications, plumbing, the availability of parts and materials, not to mention the necessities for human life (housing, food, and incentive for people to exist near the factory), and transportation networks (roads, trucks, rails, ships, harbors) to deliver the goods to somewhere useful. Another example of a major obstacle is going to be climate and atmosphere. So you've got a dome - how do you maintain an Earthlike atmosphere and conditions inside it, considering you want to run a factory complex inside it? Another consideration is that building Hondas on Venus isn't going to help Earth unless there is storage and a transportation system in place, and if it's not more efficient than just building another factory on Earth, then it's a net loss. Getting the materials to Venus, and getting the Hondas back from Venus, is surely going to cost huge amounts in rocket fuel and other space transportation expenses. Even these are just a few examples - the specifics would be much more complex and daunting, not to mention expensive and time-consuming. Perhaps not insurmountable, eventually, but certainly not trivial, nor the sort of thing that can be accomplished in a month, without any overhead costs. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I guess I wasn't clear. When I wrote "especially if the planet is years away from your civilization even in the fastest ships your empire can produce", that was just a reference to the way SE4 doesn't take distance into acount when figuring empire revenues from colonies. A colony on the far side of the quadrant will contribute just as much to the imperial coffers as one in the home system. However, I didn't mean to say that travel time was the only determining factor in colony production. Even if it were, imagine if SE4 tracked expenses not just for warships but for transports for resources. Even a standard game Escort with a couple of cargo bays is pretty expensive to maintain, and that accounting is highly simplified. I'm not saying that's an accurate representation of costs, but still, it shows the sort of thing I was talking about. If you had to build and maintain escorts to move the resources produced by the colonies, you could see how it could quickly become expensive or even counter-productive to try to build an economy spread out across many solar systems. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">As I've said many times on previous threads, and I think on this one too, I don't think it makes any sense to equate planet slots directly to surface area, and hopefully it's obvious that Proportions' facilities do not all represent items that take up the same amount of space. Only the cultural centers are described as continental in size. The facilities just represent facilities, whereas the complexes are complexes of many facilities, but even the Megacomplexes would not, I think, require continental areas. What I do think they require is environment research and development, infrastructure, life support, etc etc. It seems to me, as I've discussed at length, that there are major obstacles and requirements to overcome before a net gain to the empire is achieved. These are (very abstractly) represented in Proportions by the construction costs and the population construction rate curve. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Just because a planet has the same basic type of atmosphere as your native atmosphere, doesn't make it breathable. Suppose Venus had an Oxygen-Nitrogen atmosphere. Let's be very generous and say it's even about the same proportion of gasses, and there are no toxic particles or other components. Great, but Venus surface atmosphere is 100 x Earth's pressure, and 600-700 degrees Celsius. Instantly pressure-cooked before anyone can say "Honda." Sounds like a great place to build a new civilization. It should only take a couple of years, right? Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ok, so you're saying the actual people can be few, because they can control robots who do the actual work. That seems reasonable, but I would say it would be represented by population units in the game. How much of a population unit is actual people, and how much is droids and equiment and supplies and so on, is abstracted. So how much machinery, equipment, supplies, and machinery are you expecting to need? It too is going to need fuel and spare parts and other materials. Just exploring and studying the environment is going to take a long time, not to mention designing and engineering solutions. [quote] </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">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? Quote:
Anyway, thanks a lot for the discussion and feedback (both to you and everyone who's given feedback). PvK [ September 25, 2002, 11:55: Message edited by: PvK ] |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif 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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif * 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: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif 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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif 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 |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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. |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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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 |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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Repent or we will grind you up and make you into McNuggets. |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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). |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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*Dogscoff falls over laughing while all the Americans present pelt him with half-eaten Big Macs... |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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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. Quote:
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PvK |
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[/quote]I guess I wasn't clear. When I wrote "especially if the planet is years away from your civilization even in the fastest ships your empire can produce", that was just a reference to the way SE4 doesn't take distance into acount when figuring empire revenues from colonies. A colony on the far side of the quadrant will contribute just as much to the imperial coffers as one in the home system. However, I didn't mean to say that travel time was the only determining factor in colony production. Even if it were, imagine if SE4 tracked expenses not just for warships but for transports for resources. Even a standard game Escort with a couple of cargo bays is pretty expensive to maintain, and that accounting is highly simplified. I'm not saying that's an accurate representation of costs, but still, it shows the sort of thing I was talking about. If you had to build and maintain escorts to move the resources produced by the colonies, you could see how it could quickly become expensive or even counter-productive to try to build an economy spread out across many solar systems.[/quote] That's because you don't build military capable ships to haul cargo. You take entire asteroids, or something similar, hollow them out and use the materials to build the engines, stick a computerized brain in them, add water, and let them travel along hauling resources around. SE4 works on an accrual basis, resources are counted as soon as they are produced, no matter how long it takes to get them to the location they are needed. Military ships have to be able to accelerate quickly, which requires balanced designs. They need materials which can handle the high stresses of combat maneuvers, advanced weaponry, and most expensive of all, a highly trained crew. Cargo ships require an engine and somewhere to strap the stuff you want to carry. [/quote]As I've said many times on previous threads, and I think on this one too, I don't think it makes any sense to equate planet slots directly to surface area, and hopefully it's obvious that Proportions' facilities do not all represent items that take up the same amount of space. Only the cultural centers are described as continental in size. The facilities just represent facilities, whereas the complexes are complexes of many facilities, but even the Megacomplexes would not, I think, require continental areas. What I do think they require is environment research and development, infrastructure, life support, etc etc. It seems to me, as I've discussed at length, that there are major obstacles and requirements to overcome before a net gain to the empire is achieved. These are (very abstractly) represented in Proportions by the construction costs and the population construction rate curve.[/quote] It seems to me though, that the costs involved with creating a colony in proportions far outstrip what they would be in actuality, especially for worlds that have breathable atmospheres. [/quote]Just because a planet has the same basic type of atmosphere as your native atmosphere, doesn't make it breathable. Suppose Venus had an Oxygen-Nitrogen atmosphere. Let's be very generous and say it's even about the same proportion of gasses, and there are no toxic particles or other components. Great, but Venus surface atmosphere is 100 x Earth's pressure, and 600-700 degrees Celsius.[/quote] Utterly wrong. If Venus had the same atmospheric composition as Earth it would have a surface temperature just slightly greater than ours because there would be no runaway greenhouse effect. Many of the gases would condense at the same time and reduce the atmospheric pressure to a more manageable level. Quote:
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[/quote]A Proportions mine facility does not represent a continent-sized mine. If I were to add a continent-sized mine facility, well, it'd cost a lot more than my MegaComplexes do. The megacomplexes I do have represent less industry than a cultural center contains, and they produce up to 750 units/turn.[/quote] I still think you are far overestimating the need for population to run such things. We only use our population for many things on Earth because it is so high and because unemployment is politically bad. Quote:
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It's good enough that I'm using the basic concept of slow development (with huge payoff at the end however) for a few of the races in my own crossover mod. |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
"Oxford's contributions to technology in the Last decade have been miniscule when compared to all the contributions from every other research lab."
Im sorry, but you missed PvK' point completely. |
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Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
There is a law of diminishingreturn: If you put twice as much money into R&D you will not double output. In developed society, making second lab with the same budget as Oxford will not create such a good University.
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Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
The idea behind linear input/output relationship is that two labs can focus on two totally different subjects, yet their efforts will apply to the same project. For example, when researching gas colonizers, one lab can focus on the materials designed to make up the landing gear, another lab can design the landing gear and its mechanical properties, another lab can perform experimental tests given data from the first two labs, and this can likewise be reproduced with the many, many parts involved in the entire colonization. Thus, labs can add linearly, since they are not exactly focus on the exact same project. I agree that two labs working on the exact same project would not double the rate of production, but the idea is that there are many parts to each technology that can be split up so that each lab gets one part. Armor, for another example, can be involved with the labs that design the possible materials to be used, the many labs to test those materials against the many weapons or conditions it will have to face, then there's the lab(s) that concentrate on effective placement of armor on hulls to maximize effectiveness.
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Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
Yes, it is true that two labs can work on two different subjects, and one tech area may consist of multiple subjects, so some additive research, but only up to a point. Once again, the proportions presented are inaccurate, and this mod attempts to compensate.
The thing is, even one homeworld is NEVER going to "run out of space" for places for people to study all of the subjects they want to. The limits on technological development are mostly a matter of culture, society, and education. Real estate has almost nothing to do with the rate of scientific progress. PvK |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
Graeme, your message is sooo long...
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</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Well, clearly, we disagree. I think it depends on the idiocy of the species, how much they become self-reliant on certain resources, and then mess them up. However, if they survive to spacefaring status, then I think they will be able to figure out how to maintain sustainable resources of all three types in their home environment. That being the case, I don't see anyone "using up" a whole planet. If they do, then they don't make it to functioning spacefaring status. So, it seems to me that resource production will be more a matter of how much infrastructure can be developed in one place. Obviously, to me anyway, this place is going to be the homeworld. Resources aren't just base materials as will be found on alien planets. In order to build high-tech items, you don't just need minerals, organics, and rads - you need manufactured goods, the efficiency of producing which is highly determined by the network of resources and conditions found on a homeworld. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Well again, we disagree. I think you're oversimplifying, and not considering many problems which will take serious amounts of time to develop. Developing technology, even in completely understood conditions on a home planet completely supported by infrastructure, takes time. And, it seems to me there would be millions of issues in trying to convert an alien planet into a homeworld-equivalent. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Perhaps if you look at it as just a lab. However, that wasn't my point - you're looking at my question upside-down. What I was trying to say, is that a civilization only manages to raise so much novel thought and invention per year, mostly by the top fringe of its intellectual elite. An excellent educational system, and a gathering of minds to educate the best students in the best way, is a product of the culture as a whole, and is made possible, protected, and nurtured, by social factors built up over centuries, and which have essentially nothing to do with finding more space on alien planets to build labs. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Well, clearly our assumptions vary widely. For example, I don't see "cornucopia fusion power from water" as a basic tech in SE4. If it were so easy to generate power, what are supplies and the Quantum Reactor all about in SE4? I think you are describing a much higher tech level in these things than SE4's tech tree represents. Of course, a mod that made such assumptions (and I think you are making many assumptions about the tech abilities besides just fusion power) would be perfectly legitimate - it's just not what I imagined when I thought about Proportions mod. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Well, again, your imagination of SE4's tech levels is simply much higher than mine. For example, I don't see SE4 as starting with FTL drives. Light takes EIGHT MINUTES to get from the Sun to the Earth. An SE4 turn is about a month. So, light speed in SE4 would be oh, probably well over 1000, not 6 (ion engine speed in SE4). Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Again, I disagree. At least, at the tech levels I imagine. Each planet's environment is quite a bit different. Atmosphere composition is just one of many, many factors. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Just because you can make a chip to survive in an environment, after years of research, doesn't make it cost-effective, or not require separate research and development times thousands of different projects. See the "we're imagining different tech levels", and "no, SE4 propulsion is not FTL" issues. To me, that would be true only after an appropriately long period of extension to the SE4 tech tree. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Again, ok, you can redefine population as mostly non-organic droids, but that's just an abstraction. You still need something to be able to perform a massive range of tasks, including self-support and survival in an unexplored environment. You still need power, transportation, and tons of specialized equipment and materials. Using mostly robotic personnel may solve some problems, but it introduces others. You need less food and medicine, but more power, batteries, lubricants, maintenance facilities, and spare parts, etc. If you think this can all be made from chain-reaction factories and built up from rocks, well, I think you're describing year 3000 (or year 4000) technology again. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Well, I disagree that it's a non-issue, at least without serious tech development. Atmospheric manipulation would be a tech area, as would fusion power, pollution and temperature control, etc. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Well, a Honda factory on Earth already has the benefits of massive amounts of infrastructure for producing steel, alluminum, pLastics, spare parts, etc etc etc. You will have to either ship all such things to Venus, or build equivalent infrastructure, and the required environment for it to survive, on Venus, just to run the Honda plant. All of that is massively non-trivial, at least before year 3000-4000. Irradiated red-hot iron ore, assuming you can find it, is thousands or millions of steps away from being snapped together into a Honda. Meanwhile, Earth has an iron core, and is probably, it seems to me, far more convenient, in a thousand or more ways. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Well, at year 3000, maybe. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> If you have such technologies, maybe. Maybe by year 4000. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Given your assumptions, I might say the same thing, but again, it sounds to me like you're 600-2000 years ahead of the techs I'm imagining. Even so, though, I still think planetary conditions would be major economic disincentives. Atmosphere composition would be only one thing. Gravity, radiation, pressure, temperature, volcanic activity, meteor activity, weather activity, indigenous life, indigenous microbes, would all present seriously expensive obstacles. The few planets that might actually be somewhat hospitable would be massively more valuable, because of the reduced expense of needing to develop specialized technology. Moreover, given the size of a planet, I don't see any development effort actually "running out of space" within even a hundred years. Due to the complementary nature, and the complexity, of high-tech infrastructure found on a fully-civilized planet, I don't see alien colonies quickly reaching homeworld-challenging abilities even at very high tech levels. Again, only possibly with massively advanced technology, and even then, it would take signifigant time. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Not utterly wrong. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif You're over-simplifying again, as does SE4. There are not just a handful of possible atmospheric compositions, or conditions. It wouldn't take a whole lot to make even the Earth's atmosphere unbreathable. Just add radiation, or a large meteor strike, or massive pollution, etc. Not to mention alien planets, where the planet's size and relation to its sun would generally be massively different, etc. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> It seems to me you're reasoning backwards, again. How many of the planets we know of have an Earthlike atmospheric composition? Zero. Starting from SE4's assumption that there are only a few atmosphere types for any planet, is just a fudge for gameplay purposes. Or, maybe a following of pulp fantasy trends. Anyway, I think there is massive room for interpretation in all of this. Star Trek would be one extreme "Sir, another Earth-like planet with humanoids on it...", and reality, perhaps, another. It seems to me SE4 is pretty close to Star Trek, and Proportions is somewhere between SE4 and the middle. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Maybe not at your year 3000 tech level. At the tech level I imagine, robots would still require specialization and infrastructure development, which requires massive continuous transport of spare parts and supplies, as well as technological specialization, and infrastructure development on the planet to make the facilities feasible and productive. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> I don't see people "surviving easily" in a vacuum. They survive inside carefully and expensively produced and maintained artificial environments. Fragile environments which are only possible thanks to massive amounts of infrastructure which exists only on the homeworld. Planets generally are more inhospitible than vaccuum, especially before their environments have been explored and understood. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> It's not just a question of "population to run such things". Infrastructure (energy, supplies, spare parts, transportation, etc) and hospitible environments, are also represented by population, and by cultural facilities. Your imagined technology seems to include the ability to make everything from refined metals to microchips to mechanical parts, to limitless power, all from a few simple machines. Mine doesn't. Quote:
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif"> Well, you may have found a technique that I didn't think of, there. I'll have to check that for play balance... you may have found something I didn't intend. Quote:
It's good enough that I'm using the basic concept of slow development (with huge payoff at the end however) for a few of the races in my own crossover mod.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Sounds interesting! PvK |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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Also, colony ships are mostly pointless in Proportions. It is a lot less time consuming to send out a SYS and a few population transports, and building the colony ship right over the planet. This is especiallty true if the planet is a few systems (or more) away from the homeworld. |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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Or give colony ship big maintanace reduction? Cost should stay the same - you still need to build it either way, the big loophole is enormous maintanance of colony ship that can be skipped by building it onsite. |
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You guys's got me thinking about FTL in SE4 tersm though. I didn't want to hijack this thread so I started a new one. Link to OT thread Geoschmo |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
The space yard ship shortcut to colonization is an irritant. I'll have to do something about that, and probably the asteroid mining base thing, at least for future Versions. I have a feeling people would get peeved if I changed it for existing PBW games... or at least, perhaps I can get feedback from players of existing PBW players on what if anything I should do to reduce the effectiveness of these techniques in existing games.
PvK [ October 22, 2002, 15:51: Message edited by: PvK ] |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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One problem I have with imagining such high basic abilities, is that with those abilities, the raw materials and empty space provided by alien planets seem to me like they wouldn't be particularly helpful. The raw materials of a single planet would probably be more than enough to provide for all the needs of such an advanced techology. The main advantages of spreading out would be dispersion and maneuver, not providing "used up resources" or "room to study". PvK [ October 22, 2002, 15:48: Message edited by: PvK ] |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
[quote]Originally posted by PvK:
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The large empires in Sci-Fi are typically built through conquering and subjugating exsisting alien populations with the infrastructure more or less intact. There are of course many examples of powerful empires that have star spanning influence, but these typically only talk about a few large population centers. I.E. "The Homeworld". Problem is though with SE4, you can only have 20 players, computer or not. So it's hard to really get that satisfying "Master of all you survey" feeling when you only have one large planet and a half a dozen measly colonies that cost more to defend than they produce in return. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Geoschmo [ October 22, 2002, 16:27: Message edited by: geoschmo ] |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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Sats, mines, drones, retrofits and repairs can all be done, no problem. For fighters, only fully automated ones could be built. (Make master computers use no organics, and possibly add a computer component for fighters) You could have base-only yards that construct with organics, but require organics to build in the first place. Call 'em "Full SpaceYard" and "Remote Spaceyard" That way, orbital (full) yards would work normally, but you still can't build a full yard over an uncolonized planet... In order to make absolutely sure people can't build a remote yard and then retrofit to a full yard, force them to be on different hulls. You could have the abilities built into 100kt copies of the Space Yard, (accounting for the 400kt of space saved). Remove the components from available tech, so they can't be retrofitted onto regular bases. |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
As an alternate solution, you could lower the organic build rate of space yard components, but not remove it completely, and raise the organic cost of the colony component.
The limiting factor of fighter construction, and ship construction for that matter is typically the mineral content of the designs. You could probably find a ratio that make the colony ship inefficent enough to build on location, without seriously affecting the fighter build rate of the space yard comps, and without greatly increasing the build time of the colony ship on the homeworld, without requiring any further modifications. If it makes the maintenance too high on the colony ship you could add a slight maint reduction for the colony comp as well. No it wouldn't totally remove the possibility of someone building a colony ship onsite. But the reason they are doing it is because it's quicker that way. Take away the incentive, and if they still do it, so what? Geoschmo EDIT: Actually SJ, I just realized the fighter comps don't reaquire any organics already. So no comp mods would be required either way. The only thing that could be a problem would be for a race that is organic. [ October 22, 2002, 17:23: Message edited by: geoschmo ] |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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One of the major features of Proportions is that majority of ship building occur on orbital space yard - it takes too long to get a productive planetary space yard even on your first colony and you can not keep up with just one homeworld spaceyards. Any changes to space yards will have big repercautions and must be taken with big care. In the meantime I think the reduction of colonyship maintainance can balance it a bit. |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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You just can't make them mobile, and you can't build them out in the depths of space... The homeworld would probably end up with tens of Full-ability spaceyards in orbit. The reduced ability yards could still be used out on the frontiers to replace automated units and vehicles, build defenses, and repair/retrofit. Colony ships, and large, crewed vessels could only be built by a planet, or any spaceyard base IN ORBIT of a planet. |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
Oleg, so you want the colony ships buildable at space yards on bases, but not on space yards on ships? Still doable.
You make two separate space yard components. One that is base only, and one that is ship only. The base only one is the same as the current space yard comp, the ship only one has the reduction in organic capacity. And you increase the organic cost of the colony comp, but not so much that the total organic cost of the colony ship is more than the total mineral cost. The result is the colony ships takes the same amount of time it does now on the base yard or planet yard, but much longer on the ship yard. Already you come close to a solution, but I suppose a determined individual could send his space yard ship to the planet, build a base yard, which will build a colony ship. To reduce that you raise the organic cost of the base only space yard comp. This is basically the idea SJ proposed, I am simply saying you don't have to eliminate the organic build of these comps entirely. By simply lowering it some, and raiseing the organic cost of the colony comp, you can reach a balance where they are not impossible to build remotly, but can only efficently be built at either planet based or base based yards, not ship based ones. The only negative ramifications to the AI would be a higher maint bill in organics for any exsisting colony ships. This can be offset by the maint reduction of the colony comp. And if the AI builds a Ship with a ship only space yard and then tries to build a colony ship. It won't criple the AI, but it will tie up that particular ships build queue. Not sure how many AI build those ships though. Geoschmo [ October 22, 2002, 17:57: Message edited by: geoschmo ] |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
Geo, I normally have my SYS build a BSY first, then it moves to a different planet. The BSY builds the colony ship, and then builds defensive units. So, your solution affects nothing. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
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Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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Geoschmo |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
Ok, then that would not be a good solution, if the organics rate is lowered so much that a SYS can't even build a BSY in a reasonable amount of time. What about building up WP defenses? BSYs are necessary there, to get replenishable stores of units and such.
[ October 22, 2002, 19:30: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ] |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
If you were to require the full-rate BSY to have a whole lot of crew quarters, it would look better regarding its ability to build fully crewed ships http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
And don't forget the fact that you could still quickly build a spaceyard that makes units and defenses as fast as normal. Fyron: You can still build a defense base quickly, you just can't build a base with a full-ability spaceyard. |
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Actually my suggestion is the same as SJ's. The only difference is he is saying take out the organic rate completely, I am saying just reduce it, and increase the organic cost of the colony comp and BSY comp. EDIT: It would make building a spherworld take longer, but anyone trying that in Proportions is just sick anyway. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Geoschmo [ October 22, 2002, 23:37: Message edited by: geoschmo ] |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
My organic WPs usually cost many more orgs than mins, actually. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif
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Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
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Again, you seem to me to be assuming that everyone starts out with a technology built in to all units that actually exceeds the abilities of the Quantum Reactor. Or, something close. I don't make that assumption at all. If I did, there would be a really cheap quantum reactor component available. But there isn't. Supplies are a major part of the gameplay in Proportions. If I follow your prediction for the easy bounty of fusion power, then maybe I would add a really cheap quantum reactor component. But I don't think it would improve either realism or interestness of play. Personally, I think quantum reactors unconvincing and boring, since they eliminate one of the major elements of play, which is why I extended that line of components the way I did in Proportions. I suppose you can decide that efficient engines, supply storage, and solar collectors and/or sails can represent this sort of technology in Proportions, but notice there are trade-offs in performance. Quote:
Soon, the robots will swarm to cover the entire surface of every planet they can reach, constantly turning rocks into massive baseships with no supply requirements. Sounds like it might make an interesting mod, but a very different one from Proportions, which is all about overcoming the difficulties, and having to face multiple trade-offs and decisions at once, instead of just having the magic technology to make everything possible. Or, maybe your view isn't a mod at all - the standard SE4 set seems pretty much in line with what you're suggesting, except that everyone should start with Quantum Reactors. PvK [ October 23, 2002, 06:44: Message edited by: PvK ] |
Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
This "debate" is really funny. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
Graeme Dice, no offense, but you have completely missed almost all of (if not all of) PvK's points, and you are insanely wrong about how advanced humans will be in a few centuries. [ October 23, 2002, 09:28: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ] |
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