Too many planets
 

Is it hard to reduce amount of planets in systems?

My playins style is very "hands on"...i just hate use ministers because of AI manages totally different from what i want and see reasonable.

There just are too many planets every system. In Moo2 were maximum of 5 planets and that was good. In SE we have 13 planets. Huh. I'm micromanager but too much is too much even micromanaging.

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Suomi on paras!

Re: Too many planets
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by God Emperor:
I too get a bit cheesed off with the micromanagement, and sparse systems seem to help the computer players a bit (less planets for them to slowly colonise). Also, given the issue of gravity suitability not really being accounted for, less coloniseable planets makes more sense to me.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I went even farther in my data set. I think of an “ice planet” as being down in the range where gases are liquid, etc…, not just a terrestrial planet having an ice age. Obviously, a gas giant is another entire situation with huge gravity and huge atmospheric pressure. Nothing that evolved on any one of the three is ever going to live unprotected on any of the others, and due to the gravity issue I can’t see a rock/ice race living on a gas giant even with domes unless you postulate the existence of artificial gravity fields. Likely the gas giant types could not live in the very low (from their perspective) gravity elsewhere for very long, either. Humans have health problems after long periods in zero G, so imagine the problem for gas giant creatures. There are simply not enough settings available in the game to model this properly. So, I built into my mod the assumptions that there is no indigenous life on ice or gas giant planets, and used the available tools to deal with just properly modeling it for rock dwellers. As there is no programmed ability to let you convert planets from ice/gas giant to rock (aside from blowing them up & rebuilding them), this means you are only getting out of domes eventually on rock planets.

First, I edited all the AI race files to originate on rock planets, and verified that they all have some atmosphere other than “none”. The “house rule” is then that you can’t select ice or gas giant or atmosphere “none” when creating a race at game start.

For ice planets, I eliminated all planet types with atmosphere other than “none”. Thus, any race with the tech to colonize ice planets can colonize in domes, but atmosphere converters don’t work (nothing to convert to). If you build an atmosphere converter on an ice planet and nothing bad happens, but no matter how long you wait the atmosphere never changes.

For gas giants, due to the gravity issue I simply eliminated the tech to colonize them. You can remote mine them, but that is it.

Although I did it for the sake of “realism”, this has the side effect of greatly reducing the number of USABLE planets, and thus the number of colonies to micromanage.

You could just as easily do ice planets like gas giants, reducing the number still further.

Unfortunately, gas giants cannot have atmospheres of “none” so there is no way to do them like I did the ice planets. Otherwise, you could just set it up to open the gas giant colonization tech area on some really high level of gravitic technology, to reflect that you can now create an artificial gravity field strong enough to keep things at 1 G on the surface of a gas giant. You could still do this, I suppose, if you gave up one of the existing race atmosphere choices (in addition to “none”). Then you could eliminate all gas giant planet types with atmospheres other than that, so that once you got the tech to colonize gas giants you’d still have to stay in domes. That seems like more trouble than it is worth, so I probably won’t attempt it.

I’m also not sure how the game decides what planets to put in systems. If it randomly selects among the entries in the file, then my mode has decreased the % of planets that will be ice dramatically, and therefore not reduced the number of habitable planets so far as I think (again, I didn’t do it for that reason). On the other hand, if it first decides randomly on rock-ice-gas giant and then randomly among the entries for that type, I have not affected the overall % of each. If the former is the case, the fix would be to change all the ice planet entries in the “stock” file to atmosphere = “none” instead of deleting the ones that are not. You’d have to change the pictures and maybe the descriptive text appropriately as well. Then, assuming the program does not object to duplicate entries, you’d be OK. Adding even more duplicate uninhabitable planets to the file would let you reduce the number of habitable planets in the game even more, if desired.



[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 29 January 2001).]

Re: Too many planets
 

An idea, purely to maintain the level of diversity in the game, but without allowing a race to colonize all types of planets:

Make the colonizing techs into racial traits! Then you can't research/trade/analyze/etc. to get the others...

I'll have to do some testing to see how this might work, but maybe the usual team of modders can think about it too & come up with something...

Re: Too many planets
 

All right - I did some preliminary testing, and I think it'll work OK. I'm attaching a file with some of the appropriate changes; you'll have to cut & paste into the appropriate data files (and do a fair amount of modding to the race files, too; may even have to alter the "*.emp files" if you want to use the "Quick Start" option).

First, you add three new racial traits to "RacialTraits.txt", one for each Colonization Tech; obviously, give each one it's own racial trait ID. I set the cost to 0 (zero) so it wouldn't unbalance the existing setup options. Of course, it would be up to the player's discretion not to abuse this, since it would be fairly involved to allow the AI to start using all colonization techs again after following the rest of these steps...

Second, edit the colonization techs in the "TechArea" file to include the appropriate Racial Tech ID.

And here's where it gets tricky: you have to add the appropriate racial tech to each race. I've used the Abbidon in the example in the attached file; basically, edit the "*_AI_General" file so the race has one more "Advanced Trait" at each option level, and add the appropriate planet type as an advanced trait. For example, the original Abbidon_AI_General file reads:
=========
Race Opt 1 Num Advanced Traits := 1
Race Opt 1 Adv Trait 1 := Psychic
=========
And the new file would read:
=========
Race Opt 1 Num Advanced Traits := 2
Race Opt 1 Adv Trait 1 := Psychic
Race Opt 1 Adv Trait 2 := Gas Giant Race
=========
This is clearer in the attached file. I'm not certain what would happen in games where racial points are set to 0 (zero) for setup, but the above should catch the 2000, 3000 and 5000 racial point options.

Finally, all the "*_AI_Research" files need to be edited to remove all references to colonization techs.

You'll also have to pay attention in startup and select the appropriate racial tech for your environment; I wouldn't suggest selecting "Rock/Oxygen" as your environment, and then taking "Gas Giant Race" as a racial trait http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif .

Any comments on my plan for implementing Barnacle Bill's idea?

Re: Too many planets
 

Sounds interesting and should work. A bit too involved for me though. Think I'll probably follow BB's suggestion of just linking Gas Giant Technology with a Gravity Tech level....

Re: Too many planets
 

You will need to make new emp files for all races if you implement such changes. The game doesn't allow you to use old ones if you have made any changes to racial trait file.

Re: Too many planets
 

I don't have a problem with allowing races to colonize all types -- gas, rock, and ice. The way I deal with believability is to assume that the game's definition of a "Gas" planet is not what one normally thinks of as a gas giant. And same for Ice planet. Instead, the planets shown are all reasonably Earth-like, but represent extremes that one could not colonize with standard technology. So a Gas planet might be like Venus -- very thick atmosphere. An Ice planet might be like Mars.

This mental adjustment brings its own problems. For instance, how can there possibly be so many Earth-like planets in one star system?? http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...s/confused.gif http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif

Re: Too many planets
 

I've made a simple mod to reduce planets per system to 4 or 5 for the standard solar systems, and 1 to 3 for binaries and trinaries. This has made each planet that much more valuable and the AI seems to come out more aggressively looking for real estate to conquer. I'll post it is there's interest.



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Elwood Bluze

Re: Too many planets
 

Dmm,
Think of this way...remember cloud city in Star Wars? You have to have some kind of device to negate effects of gravity in the colony but that should be easy enough to an advanced race...Easy way yo colonize gas planets...as for ice, well people live on the north and south poles right? Much of those are ice, in fact if I recall right the entire North Pole is ice...

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"He's dead, Jim."-- Lt. Commander Leonard "Bones" McCoy |Chief Medical Officer / USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

[This message has been edited by DirkHowitzer (edited 29 January 2001).]

Re: Too many planets
 

I really don't find it unrealistic that races can colonize any planet type if they research it. If you want to base it on something like a race is born on a solid, rock planet, they should easily be able to adapt to an ice environment, since it is essentially a different type of rock.
Gas colonization obviously brings up quarrels with gravity since gas giants are more massive, and hence have a much larger gravitational force. But then again, we have already abandoned mass effects with the propulsion systems, so why not allow a similar line of reasoning with gas giant colonies? My thoughts are that this type of problem is exactly what would be researched anyways.

Re: Too many planets
 

What everyone here seems to be forgetting is one of the classic sci fi themes. That is to say, wholesale genetic alteration to fit extreme planetary conditions. Waterworld? Gillmen. Heavy gravity? Squatty musclebound fireplugs that make Arnold look like a "girly man". It is not implausible at all to me that an ancient advanced race with complete control over their genetic code could not design bodies to live in the most extreme of conditions, even on gas giants. Why limit yourselve to the current primitive world view? The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine (hmmm, seems I've heard something like this before http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif )

Re: Too many planets
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ColdSteel:
What everyone here seems to be forgetting is one of the classic sci fi themes. That is to say, wholesale genetic alteration to fit extreme planetary conditions. Waterworld? Gillmen. Heavy gravity? Squatty musclebound fireplugs that make Arnold look like a "girly man". It is not implausible at all to me that an ancient advanced race with complete control over their genetic code could not design bodies to live in the most extreme of conditions, even on gas giants. Why limit yourselve to the current primitive world view? The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine (hmmm, seems I've heard something like this before http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/ima...ons/icon12.gif )<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


a long time ago, on a thread far far away, someone proposed a genetic modification center. it occurs to me that this would be possible within the game mechanics, but not within the current MODable text files. new empires can be created in-game that rebel from other races, and i believe that they contain a copy (not a pointer to, but a copy of) the parent race. therfore, a new race could be created with all the same properties but a different atmosphere type, and that race could replace the population on the planet with the facility on it (or convert by percentage over time) and stay as a member of the same empire. and for that matter, why not genetically breed better wariors and a specific scientist cast? oooh, the possibilities. but ANYWAY - if that feature could be implemented, it would be pretty sweet.

Re: Too many planets
 

Have just replied to your other post and then found this one. To answer your question, it is quite easy to reduce the number of planets per system. Just edit your SystemType.txt file that is in the data directory. You can either just modify the Standard 1, Standard 2 and Standard 3 entries (easy) or make up new system types (a bit more involved).
I had some fun modifying Emperor Zodds Quadrant and System type files that he has uploaded into the Mods Archive.
Suggest you check it out.

I too get a bit cheesed off with the micromanagement, and sparse systems seem to help the computer players a bit (less planets for them to slowly colonise). Also, given the issue of gravity suitability not really being accounted for, less coloniseable planets makes more sense to me.

Does mean though that high tech levels take much longer to achieve...
Anyway, hope this has helped.....

Re: Too many planets
 

Elwood,
I been working on sparse systems myself and have played a few games in them (and believe that the AI works a bit better too) but would be interested to see what you have developed. Would you post it into the Mods Archive? Thanks....

I take the earlier point that we could consider Ice and Rock planets to be variations of the same thing and that the Tiny - Huge descriptions only represent increments around some ideal planet size. As for Gas Giants though, I think we have to assume that some form of gravity tech has been developed to allow them to be colonised.

For my sparse systems, I think I might reduce the costs of Ice and Rock colonisation techs a bit. Will mean that the AI Gas races will get a bonus but I am happy to concede that given the way the AIresearch.txt files are configured.

Re: Too many planets
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by God Emperor:
[b]Elwood,
I been working on sparse systems myself and have played a few games in them (and believe that the AI works a bit better too) but would be interested to see what you have developed. Would you post it into the Mods Archive? Thanks....

I take the earlier point that we could consider Ice and Rock planets to be variations of the same thing and that the Tiny - Huge descriptions only represent increments around some ideal planet size. As for Gas Giants though, I think we have to assume that some form of gravity tech has been developed to allow them to be colonised.
B]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


modified system types files are always good. there should be a way to tweak the AI (i have not tried editing the AI scripts) to behave in the dense planet areas the same way it would in the sparse planet areas. that would certainly be a significant improvement.

this might sound silly to you, but from the picture it looks to me like the gas colony is actually floating. i guess they just have to develop the massive hot-air-baloon technology, and dont really need to lighten the gravitational forces. http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Too many planets
 

God Emperor,

I'll go ahead and post them shortly. I did make a couple of tweaks.

1) No pesky tiny moons. Or moons at all.

2) Removed Black Holes from all quadrants due to AI deficiencies.

3) Standard solar systems 1,2, and 3 have 6, 5 and 4 planets respectively.

4) Elwood's Test and Mid-Life quadrants have no storms whatsoever. I did leave destroyed stars and asteroids in there.

Give them a try; I'd curious to see what ya'll think.

------------------
Get my latest album: Elwood Bluze "Biscuits and Bullets" Not on sale anywhere!

Re: Too many planets
 

In the sense of what is portrayed in SE4, an ice planet is not just a terrestrial artic zone where it is like the polar regions of Earth only planet-wide. We could colonize that without a dome NOW, if we had a space ship to get there (unless you count an Eskimo igloo as a dome). That is just a rock planet with real bad conditions, in SE4 terms. An ice planet, where all planets are subdivided in rock or gas giant or ice, is a planet with tempertures near absolute 0, where substances like oxygen, CO2, hydrogen, etc... that are gases on Earth are liquids or maybe even solids. To colonize that WITH a dome will require some pretty serious tech, but is feasible. Without a dome, though, you couldn't even breath.

A gas giant has surface gravity many times what a human could tolerate, much less move around in, and atmospheric pressures like sea pressure at the bottom of the ocean. Just to colonize with a dome would take very advanced gravity control.

To change either an ice planet or a gas giant sufficiently to allow life as we know it to survive outside a dome would mean, in SE4 terms, changing it into a rock planet. That might be possible, but the cost would be much higher than atmosphere conVersion.

To genetically engineer humans sufficiently to make them capable of living without a dome in either the ice or gas giant environments would be to make them no longer life as we know it. You are talking about much more fundamental changes than just putting on gills so they can breath water, or fur & blubber so they can run with the polar bears, or beefing them up so they can live on a planet that has maybe 1.5 G gravity. By the time you got done doing it, they would not be human anymore, or able to live on Rock planets anymore either.

Re: Too many planets
 

BB,
I agree that humans could not live undomed on the _surface_ of gas or ice planets. But why can't they live elsewhere, floating in the atmosphere of a gas planet, or in caverns or oceans under the surface of an ice planet? Then they might only need minor, reversible genetic engineering to allow them to live there, given the right atmosphere. (Yeah, yeah, I know I'm still ignoring a lot of biology. But this is space opera, not serious sci-fi.)

Re: Too many planets
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by dmm:
BB,
I agree that humans could not live undomed on the _surface_ of gas or ice planets. But why can't they live elsewhere, floating in the atmosphere of a gas planet, or in caverns or oceans under the surface of an ice planet? Then they might only need minor, reversible genetic engineering to allow them to live there, given the right atmosphere. (Yeah, yeah, I know I'm still ignoring a lot of biology. But this is space opera, not serious sci-fi.)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

If they are "floating in the atmosphere" of a gas giant, they are either in a floating dome or you have made them into something which is not "human". You are talking about pressures higher than the bottom of the oceans, and a high gravity trying to pull them deeper. They would have to be naturally buoyant like a fish or a blimp, able to tolerate the pressure, able to move without contacting the surface, etc... That is a new species, even if it has a human fore-brain.

On an ice planet, you are talking about temperatures where gases are liquid, etc... It isn't any warmer in a cave. You know, they drop liquid nitrogen on warts so they quick freeze and can be broken off. You are talking about making the entire human body able to tolerate that sort of cold. Again, by the time you get done with that the result is (a) not bilogically human or even "life as we know it", but rather an entirely different species, and (b) could not live in any other environment.

Not even in space opera do you see that degree of genetic engineering. What you see in space opera is adapting people to live in the sorts of unpleasant environments we have here on earth, again like gills & flipper feet & webbed fingers to live underwater or fur & blubber to live in the arctic w/o needing an Eskimo suit.

In SE4, people try to capture populations that breath other atmosheres so they can colonize w/o domes or atmosphere conVersion. I can see genetic engineering as something that might let you create your own. They would still be specialized to one atmosphere rather than able to breath everything. You would be making these people in a lab, not converting them from existing people, and they would be expensive, and would need to be treated in the game as a separate race. Creating people to live w/o a dome on an ice or gas giant planet would be a MUCH bigger deal than making people to breath a different gas, and therefore even more expensive.

[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 02 February 2001).]

Re: Too many planets
 

OK, I think I see the main reason why we're not understanding each other. You're assuming that "undomed" means the people are totally free to walk about the planet unaided by technology. I was assuming that, domed or undomed, they are using various colonization techs to allow them to live there.

Regarding the atmospheric pressure on a gas giant: the pressure only gets huge if you go deep into the atmosphere. It is strictly a function of how much the atmosphere on top of you weighs. My colonists are smart enough not to go too deep. And, as we've been discussing in another topic, the gravitational acceleration at the outer edge of a gas giant's atmosphere is also not that large. (For Jupiter, at its equator, gravity is only 2.3x Earth's. For Neptune and Uranus, it is comparable to Earth. Source: Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 62nd Ed., 1982) On the negative side, I was surprised to find that our solar system's gas giants are COLD. However, there have been discoveries recently of gas giants orbiting Sun-like stars at Earth-like radii, so perhaps gas giants don't _have_ to be cold either.

Regarding ice planets being way too cold, even under their surface: I was assuming that they were not a solid hunk of frozen nitrogen, but instead that they were like some of the huge moons of Jupiter and Saturn are thought to be, with a frozen surface covering a liquid (or maybe rock) interior. The interior is kept warm by volcanism induced by gravitational tides or radioactivity or pressure.

Re: Too many planets
 

Well, my theory on Gas Giant colonization is that they are in some sort of massive space station that orbits the planet within the atmosphere. This would be quite feasible, especially if there was some sort of anti-gravitational technology. They could fly around in aircraft or whatever to get from place to place.
I think the difference between the domed Versions of all the planets and non-domed is basically the life forms would need some sort of breathing apparatus to survive outside the dome, while in non-domed planets, they would need simply an environmental suit to protect them from the hostile environments. This would allow them to get around the planet much easier if they did not need to bring their air with them.

Re: Too many planets
 

I definately interpret "undomed" as meaning walking around like people do on earth. You don't need breathing apparatus, you don't need any special high-tech equipment, if civilization drops back to the stone age on that planet due to some disaster the folks there can still survive (perhaps at lower population density due to food production). The "dome" thing means you can't use the surface of the planet normally and have to live in a structure with the right environment, which isolates you from the outside environment. "Undomed" means you can live normally in the outside environment.

For colonists not to go too deep in a gas giant's atmosphere, that requires that they have a way to do that. That requires they must be naturally buoyant like a fish in water, or some hypothetical critter which floats in the air like a blimp by virtue of internal cavities filled with some lighter-than-air gas. Either of those require, in addition to buoyancy, a means of propulsion without touching the ground. If they live on an artificial structure which is itself buoyant, or supported by gravity, that is a "dome". No life form that I can think of here on earth could live in the atmoshere of a gas giant, outside of a man-made artificial environment. Certainly not a human, or anything produced by genetically engineering humans if the result was to recognizable as & interfertile with humans.

If you have to live deep in the caves under the surface of an ice planet to take advantage of the heat from a molten core, that is a "dome" too, for all practical purposes.

So, I can see life forms from an rock or ice or gas giant planet being able to live on one of the other two INSIDE a constructed artificial environment which mimics their natural one (i.e. a "dome"). I can't see them ever being able to live "undomed" on one. If you change a gas giant critter unough to live on an ice planet "undomed", it is no longer a gas giant critter but rather an ice planet critter. If you change an ice planet unough that a gas giant critter can live on it "undomed", it is no longer an ice planet but rather a gas giant planet.

The tools do not exist to model this properly in SE4 via mod for ALL the three planet types. The choice seems to be to either make each type a racial trait so you can never colonize the other, or make it work right for one and eliminate the possibility of races originating on the other two. In my data set, I did the later.

If separate abilities existed for colonizing a given planet type with a dome and colonizing without a dome, it could then be modeled correctly by making the "colonize without a dome" a racial trait and "colonize with a dome" something anybody could learn.

Re: Too many planets
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by apache:
I think the difference between the domed Versions of all the planets and non-domed is basically the life forms would need some sort of breathing apparatus to survive outside the dome, while in non-domed planets, they would need simply an environmental suit to protect them from the hostile environments. This would allow them to get around the planet much easier if they did not need to bring their air with them. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Yeah, that's the way I was thinking about it.

I think BB is being too restrictive saying that undomed colonies should be able to survive under stone-age conditions. How many modern urbanites would survive if Earth suddenly reverted to stone age conditions? And we're not very advanced compared to the spacefaring SEIV races.

However, I do very much agree with BB that, for example, rock races should always have a harder time colonizing gas and ice planets. I would like to see that idea (dare I say "reality"?) reflected in the rules, just not as restrictively as BB proposes.

Ideally, I would propose 4 classes of colonies:
4. total artificial environment (wrong atmos, wrong type)
3. partial artificial environment (right atmos, wrong type)
2. lightly domed (wrong atmos, right type)
1. unrestricted (right atmos, right type).

The max pop, facil, & storage would increase for each class. The ability to build the top two colony classes would be a racial trait. To compensate for making the game harder for peace-lovers, give players the ability to trade population with other players, or allow immigration, or allow research into genetically-altered populations.

Re: Too many planets
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by dmm:
How many modern urbanites would survive if Earth suddenly reverted to stone age conditions? And we're not very advanced compared to the spacefaring SEIV races.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is why I wrote "perhaps at lower population density due to food production". If technology on earth today suddenly dropped to the stone age, there will be a huge die-off. I can't think of a scenario for dropping it to the stone age which wouldn't involve killing lots of people, anyway, but if it did then most remaining people would die because they did not know how to survive, and because as technology goes lower the population density you can feed goes down. In the end, though, people will be left alive. From what I have read, North America had about 2 million inhabitants when Europeans first found the place. The combined population of the US & CAnada today is in the vicinity of 300 million. That is the sort of "die off" you would be talking about.

Now consider folks living in domes on the moon. There is no nature - nothing to hunt or fish, not roots & nuts & fruits & berries to gather. Hydoponic farms, etc... require chemical processing, which is gone. Food is not the real problem, though. The equipment that reprocesses the air cannot be operated or maintained. Everybody dies.

I do agree there should be degrees, much as you have proposed. It is much more difficult to put a dome in where the atmoshere is just the wrong gas than it is when you have to deal with all those other issues.



[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 03 February 2001).]