.com.unity Forums - Proportions....

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Re: Proportions....

Starliners, I mostly do not use them unless I have not researched medium transports because of maintenance costs, to be hit chances and speed. Maybe I am missing something about them, but do they need to be balanced? Similar thoughts about starliner modules compared with the respective cargo components.

Fighters, I am still thinking about some smaller Versions, maybe 5kT or 10kT drone-like types. Anyone reading P.F.Hamiltons Armageddon series? I like the idea of combat wasps.

Facility upgrade button in production queue is a problem. I know, we should be careful about it, savegame before.Is it possible to do some fine tuning about the facility families? E.g. I would like to strictly build Distribution Centers or just a space port at some planets, but with the use of the upgrade button it changes often to something else during building, like spaceport+resupply or such. Maybe you could put all of the really different things into different families?

Just some thoughts to one of my favorite mods,
PTF

Re: Proportions....

Small Starliners are just there to provide the ability to move population without researching up to Med Transport. Since Med Transport is fairly quick to get, this may make them too inefficient to be a worthwhile choice, with no way to retrofit them into something efficient. In a way this makes sense, but it would be more interesting if they could be retrofit into something more efficient, although I haven't found an easy way to do so when I thought about it before. There's probably something, though.

What are you thinking about Starliner Modules? They are intended to allow the maximum population capacity per ship, as was requested by players. They're especially good in those situations where you need to get the maximum number of people off a planet in a relatively short time. They're supposed to be attractive choices for population transports, and unattractive for other transport types.

As for the auto-upgrade button, I think it's a hopeless cause, because of how inflexible upgrades are in SE4. I've chosen to use them to make it possible to do some logical transformation of facilities, as requested by some players, for expensive facilities, allowing planetary development without so much scrapping. Because there are some interesting choices involved, it will almost never make sense to issue empire-wide "upgrade facilities" orders. Even in unmodded SE4, I almost always find that button to be more of a booby trap than a help. As for morphing projects in progress, I've only ever seen that when somehow the ministers seize control of the empire, through deliberate or forgetful player minister settings. I don't think the "Upgrade All Facilities" button will do that - will it?

PvK

Re: Proportions....

Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
<CUT>
As for the auto-upgrade button, I think it's a hopeless cause, because of how inflexible upgrades are in SE4. I've chosen to use them to make it possible to do some logical transformation of facilities, as requested by some players, for expensive facilities, allowing planetary development without so much scrapping. Because there are some interesting choices involved, it will almost never make sense to issue empire-wide "upgrade facilities" orders. Even in unmodded SE4, I almost always find that button to be more of a booby trap than a help.
PvK

Well, YMMV (and it obviously does) but I always used to use the empire-wide "upgrade facilities" button in vanilla SE4, and miss it's use in Proportions. Not enough to stop playing Proportions mind, but I do wonder why you can't upgrade smoothly from one type of facility to the next.

Steve.

Re: Proportions....

Quote:

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Not enough to stop playing Proportions mind, but I do wonder why you can't upgrade smoothly from one type of facility to the next.

Because you're only allowed to upgrade to the Last Version of the facility you've researched.
His point is that you will not always want to do that in proportions, and it may even be a bad move.<hr /></blockquote>Why shouldn't I be able to promote my Research Centres, eventually, into Research Megaplexes? Instead I have to knock down the Centres, build Complexes, promote those, then knockthem down to build Megaplexes. It's this kind of thing that feels counter-intuitive, and it's the one big thing in Proportions that I don't like.

Steve

Re: Proportions....

Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
What are you thinking about Starliner Modules?

Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
I don't think the "Upgrade All Facilities" button will do that - will it?

I am not quite sure what your question is about. With the upgrade all Facilities button all of the Facilities in progress (which could be many years/centuries in Proportions) upgrade to the highest facilities available. I often use this (maybe I am kind of cheating by doing this?) and start building nature shrine II and in parallel I research shrines III and then I press upgrade all facilities so this entry changes to nature shrine III. But on the other hand this procedure also creates a mess in almost everyone of the space port, cities, resupply and similar facilities.

PTF

Re: Proportions....

Quote:

Originally posted by steveh11:
Why shouldn't I be able to promote my Research Centres, eventually, into Research Megaplexes? Instead I have to knock down the Centres, build Complexes, promote those, then knockthem down to build Megaplexes. It's this kind of thing that feels counter-intuitive, and it's the one big thing in Proportions that I don't like.

Because you are playing with an old Version of Proportions? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif In 2.5.1, you can do this.

PvK

Re: Proportions....

OK, does anybody check Proportions with the newest SE patch ? I'm still at work and cannot do myself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Proportions....

So the new ? is how is the new patch going to effect your MOD and it's release time table.

Re: Proportions....

Quote:

Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by PvK:
What are you thinking about Starliner Modules?

Compared with a stack of cargo I components the overall costs are slightly higher, as far as I recall from here. The organics are more expensive, the minerals go down a bit, but overall you have to pay more. Plus, the medium transports with sl modules get a malus in defense. Because of the over-proportional higher costs, I rarely use the higher cargo II+III also, but that's another story.
<hr /></blockquote>If I recall correctly, Starliner Modules, and high-tech Cargo Bays are both intentionally more expensive than their counterparts, because they represent attempts to do what some players asked for - the ability to use high technology to stuff as much cargo into a design as possible. The Starliner Modules help for mass exodus in minimum time (reduces build costs by distributing resource types used) and in some cases for more cost-effective population transports (both by spending orgs, and by increasing capacity per ship, which divides down the other non-cargo costs of the ship). The high-tech cargo bays are good when you want a more capacious transport of other types. Cargo Bay I remains the cheapest component for simply transporting some units, when your design has enough space that you don't feel like maximizing capacity with expensive tech.

There's a similar situation with armor - you have to decide whether you want to max out structure or save some resources to buy something else as well.

Quote:

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by PvK:
I don't think the "Upgrade All Facilities" button will do that - will it?

I am not quite sure what your question is about. With the upgrade all Facilities button all of the Facilities in progress (which could be many years/centuries in Proportions) upgrade to the highest facilities available. I often use this (maybe I am kind of cheating by doing this?) and start building nature shrine II and in parallel I research shrines III and then I press upgrade all facilities so this entry changes to nature shrine III. But on the other hand this procedure also creates a mess in almost everyone of the space port, cities, resupply and similar facilities.
<hr /></blockquote>That's what I was asking... sigh. I didn't realize it would change facilities in progress. Unfortunately, this adds another tradeoff where players who want to spend time fighting the interface can get better performance. I guess it has the trade-off that you often won't want to upgrade everything, so often it will do more damage than it gains.

One reason it would be hard to make all upgrades always desirable (if I wanted to) is that there is a big difference in Proportions between construction rates of small colonies versus developed worlds. A high-tech homeworld can upgrade Research Center I to Research Megaplex III in 0.4 turns, on average. But a new colony would take much longer, and will get much better results in terms of time and in terms of cost and in terms of output, by building a bunch of Research Center I's.

Another reason is that I added trade-offs of investment - expensive long-term performance versus cheap short-term performance. In the middle of a war, it often makes more sense to build weapons and fast/cheap facilities rather than expensive terraforming and infrastructure development.

PvK

Re: Proportions....

Mainly the new patch is going to make 3.0 possible, since I have been meaning to add and change weapons to take advantage of the new damage types now that they work correctly.

I think I'll hope that this week you guys test and find any issues, and make any brilliant Last-minute suggestions. Maybe I'll post a beta 2.5.3 tonight so you guys can test that and give feedback, and then I'll try to post the final 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 this weekend, if time allows.

PvK