New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

I had the idea of a new facility...
a facility which can make more place on a planet for population...a facility like Habitations or sometihng else which raise up the population capacity of the planet...
Do you think it is possible to mod this?
And do you think it will be a good facility?

Thanks.
Gustyboy

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

Interesting Idea but I think one reason why it's not there is that Population does'nt seem to have a big impact in the game - sure you get bonuses for having large population, but these bonus seem (to me) far and few between.

So you have to think: Why would I want a larger population base on a particular planet, than say additionnal storage or even more mining facilities ?

Perhaps this type of facility would be more interesting if it would impact the bonus that large population gives... !!

RiTz21

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

I don't think it's possible to mod it, but it's a good idea (I had a similar idea not too long ago, but didn't find a way to mod one).

You'd have to drop the standard planet population limits, since SEIV already operates under the assumption that private residences and the like are too small to be individually tracked in the game. For example, you could mod all of the planets to have a max of 5M population -- then players could either keep the 5M people on the planet and build lots of military facilities, or else build lots of civilian housing and get lots of population, but not much room for military facilities.

There's a wish list floating a few threads back, so knock yourself out! ;-)

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

"sure you get bonuses for having large population, but these bonus seem (to me) far and few between."

Like most things, this can be modded; it's in settings.txt. You get a bonus roughly every billion people you have, unmodded. I know suicide junkie has done things that make those much finer grained.

Don't know it too much BTW. At 4000 pop, you get a 40% production bonus. At 8000 (full huge world) you get an 80% bonus. This is *on top* of the bonuses for your race and for the happyness bonus (which is another 20% max). It also applies to both shipyard and resource facilities.

EDIT: more population also = more militia, which makes your worlds harder to invade, and more hitpoints to kill off before the planet is killed off.

Phoenix-D

[ July 03, 2002, 02:41: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, this is another fairly simple feature that has been requested for ages. I've been requesting an 'Arcology' facility for emergency housing (like when a planet destruction event pops up and you have one year to find new homes for thousands of population points) on a regular basis for some time. As with everything else, popularity seems to rule. If many people sent emails requesting this feature it would get done.

Since I've seen sphereworlds modded to have more than 100 billion population (100 thousand million) I presume that a double word is already used to track population of planets. As long as an Arcology only adds 100/200/300 million or so space I don't think you'd overflow the game's ability to track it.

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

emergency housing my fuzzy white butt, i have been asking forever for a facility type that will add extra facility slots. that way you can build hive worlds and archologies that will hold more pop and facilities after they are done.

of course, they were never added. probably never will be.

another simple yet good add would be to allow components to take up negative tonnage. that way you could add expensive, yet tonnage increasing components. currently the only way to do it is via mounts.

edit for clarity: Baron had some sharp things to say. i was NOT comparing him to my fuzzy white butt. re: mounts, i was refering to mounts that make existing components smaller and increase their cost.

if you could have negative size on a component, you could research minitureization technology to gain access to a negative sized component, and add as many as desired to your ships. that way, you dont have to edit the entire tech tree. of course, once mounts are researchable, its can be solved that way as well (although not as open-ended as it would be with the component)

[ July 03, 2002, 14:23: Message edited by: Puke ]

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

[Never mind. I misinterpreted.]

[ July 04, 2002, 02:56: Message edited by: Spuzzum ]

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

You know Puke, if you use rogaine, you can turn that fuzz into real hair!

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

I think we can put this post in relation with the other one which talk about cities on planets and so on...

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

IMHO the best solution would be to have all planets with zero (or very small) population capacity by default, and a higher number of facility slots. When you colonise it, the coloniser-ship turns into a population facility, which will house (say) 150 million ppl. To acheive higher potential population levels, you have to build more population facilities .

Since your population is taking up facility slots, you'd have to balance your population growth requirements against your production requirements for each planet:
You could choose a small population and a large number of production facilities, or you could invest the time and facilities required to build up a bigger population and benefit from the resulting bonuses, which would outperform the other strategy in the long run.

Planets where you can't breathe the atmosphere would have the same number of facility slots as equivalent-sized breathable planets, but the domed population facilities would hold much less population than the undomed ones. When the time comes to replace the domed population with a native-breathing one, you'd have to scrap all the domes to gain the extra facility slots.

For domed planets to be balanced against undomed ones, the "minimum population to operate facility" setting would have to be activated. Otherwise you could just build one small dome and fifty research facilities on a huge unbreathable planet, and there would be no real difference between domed and undomed worlds.

A cool added feature would be if the game could track maximum native-breather population and maximum domed population seperately for each planet. That way, you could build a dome on your homeworld (at the expense of a facility slot) to accomodate a limited number of aliens. It really winds me up the way that one million non-breathers on my homeworld of 8 billion can force the entire planet to be domed.

For micromanagment freaks, you could even track each atmosphere seperately, and force the player to build a dome for methane, another dome for hydrogen... all on the same planet. But I think that would be taking it too far.

Researching the right tech levels would of course result in higher-density population facilities and domes.

IMHO this would be an elegant and logical approach to population which would add an interesting layer of management and control to the game. Of course it's unlikely to happen before SE5...

EDIT: Just remembered another benefit of this model- when a planet is under attack, damage to the population would be much more realistic, with one (un)lucky hit to a dome or population centre wiping out huge numbers at once.

[ July 04, 2002, 11:39: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

Well, Dogscoff, taking your idea a step further...

How about if the space on a planet is a single resource pool? You can build industrial facilities to support your empire, and use a certain amount of space, you can build housing for population, and use a certain amont of space, or you can store cargo -- troops, WPs, satellites, etc. -- and use that same space! This means that the 'cargo facility' would go out the window, of course. You'd get extra cargo space by NOT building facilities. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Combined with the 'labor' resource rules discussed in another thread this would make empire management very interesting. You'd have to balance industry with the population needed to operate it. If you over-develop a world it gets harder to defend it. And if you over-defend a world it gets harder to develop. And with no clear boundary on population you can have over-populated worlds, too. What next, birth control policies? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Certainly there would be expansionist pressures on empires with a lot of over-populatd planets.

[ July 04, 2002, 21:00: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

Guys, really. If you want all that, just play Outpost. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Don't you think there is enough to keep track of as it is with SEIV?

Geo

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, if the AI managed ships better there wouldn't be so much to keep track of. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But anyway, I don't like a 'pure' war game. I want a simulation that includes the possibility of armed conflict. SimCity is nice but too simplistic. The previous generations of 4X games were just plain to simplistic. MOO 3 seems to be moving in the right direction. I'm really looking forward to it even if it has been reduced a lot from the ambitious original design.

So, yes, I think it's worthwhile to discuss how to flesh out the infrastructure underlying your empire.

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

Same here, Baron -- conflict and armed battles are fun and all, but for me the thrill of playing space games is the chance to be an evil or not-so-evil overlord, controlling my population with an iron or fleshy fist and being forced to negotiate and fight off the threat of those hideous or not-so-hideous aliens.

Food for thought: some of the most entertaining competitive games of all time, like M.U.L.E., featured no combat at all. ;-)

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

Well, this isn't quite the same, but I was thinking of having a racial trait of "subterranian" (as seen in MOO2) that costs 2000 to 2500 points. You can't actually have more population, but you could simulate it by having "larger" facilities (reaching deep into the ground) that produce more resources/intel/research because they house more workers. These facilities would say produce 50% more than the typical facilities at each level. Thus you would have 50% more facilities (kind of).

I didn't actually execute this mod because there are just so many buildings that would need to be added to the game, and quite frankly, I like being married http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif But maybe some one else would like to run with it?

Cheers,

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

There's not a whole lot of difference between that and the racial trait "Advanced Storage", ISTM.

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If a population expansion power were available that gave a percentage increase you could do this with a much smaller mod. Just create a 'Subterranean Levels' Facility that increases population by X percent and all production by X percent. Since all those 'planet wide' abilities are only effective once, there's no need to control how many get built. No reason to build more than one. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

But, I think the main reason MM might not want to make a population storage ability is just that it might reduce the value of 'Advanced Storage Techniques'.

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Wouldn't a person choose to still use AST with the population storage, since it gives 4 more facility slots that are able to make your homeworld from 4.8 billion to 9.6 billion?

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

Oh sure, many people would like it anyway because you'd have more to begin with and could still add the facilities to increase it. I'm just speculating. I don't really know why MM hasn't added this fairly simple ability. If enough people request it he probably will.

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Good idea. Very good idea.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, we already have to manage population, facility construction and unit storage. All I'm suggesting is a more flexible way of implementing it. I don't think it would create much extra micromanagement for the player, but it would open up a whole new swathe of possible strategies and playstyles.

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

"Guys, really. If you want all that, just play Outpost. Don't you think there is enough to keep track of as it is with SEIV?"

One of the reasons I play SEIV is the complexity and the micromanagement the game offers. If I want a game with fewer complexity I would play Reach for the stars or a similar simple game.

I would opt even for more economical options. Economic considerations are the most important in our modern society. Why should it be different in the future? Military is only a tool to achieve this.
In SE4 I really miss more complex trade options. In truth there are alot of different facilities but only few real strategies to settle planets.

For SE5 I would suggest the following colonization system:

a. The number of planet types should not be fixed (like now with rock, ice and gas). Number and features of planet types should be editable. Each planet type should have an own colonization tech like it is now.
Then you could have such wonderful worlds like jungle, ocean, steppe etc planets.


b. I would also carry over an idea from MOO2. The planet gravity. With low, normal or high gravity, this should be enough. You know, low grav races should not be able to live on high grav worlds and other constellation should have to pay some penalties. (except they have anti-grav technology)

c. The concept of a max population which depends on the planet size should be taken out. Instead each planetary body should have a population max. consisting of factors like size, friendly/hostile terrain, gravity, athmosphere and a generic number. (computer can calculate this during galaxy creation)
Special facilities should be able to provide more potential for population (for example if I create a "hivecity" facility, the max-pop could be increased by 1000m or such)

d. As well the concept of "space" for unit storage should also be taken out. Instead of this there should be facilities which can support certain unit types.
For example: a garrison facility which supports 100 space of troops, or a fighter garrison facility which supports fighter squadrons, or a planetary defense facility which provides space for weapon platforms.
This enables the player to make a planet either a pure military base or rather an economic center. (or a mixture of both)

e. Each planet should also have a number of "slots" for special orbital facilities.

f. Pre-requisites for facilities:
Certain facilities should have pre-requisites, like a certain usage of organic/radioactive points per turn. These could be from the same planet or imported from another. Certain facilities should also require a certain amount of population on the same planet to be effectivly operated.
If facilities dont have these pre-requisites they can only operated at a certain degree (emergency operation, maybe at 50% efficiency or so) or even not at all.

f. Freighters: Another idea from MOO2. Why not having a virtual freighter pool which transports the resources from one point to the other. The player needs not to manage the freighters, they are only virtual and collected in a pool.
But the player has to design and to build them and assign them to his imperial freighter pool. (Eg each cargo space can transport 100 resources or so - practical calculation will show it)
Freighters are also needed to transport trade goods etc.
In this form, also population could be transported. (like MOO2) This does not mean population transport in military transporters is not so important anymore. (but it could be alot faster than civilian freighters from the transport pool)

g. Piracy: Player press a shortkey and the freighter transport lanes he is able to know are coming up. If he moves warships on or near these lanes, he can destroy enemy freighters. If he has some boarding personnel on his warships there should be occasionally an increase in its own resource pools.
This would give a feeling like Cpt. Drakes Freebooters.

KlausD

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

Hehe. I was just playing. I am all for tweaking the economic factors of the game. Although there are times that I just want a military game too, so I hope that if this stuff is added it's optional. I just don't know if I want to have to build houses for all my people on top of everything else we already have to control. At least not all the time.

A few suggestions to allow some of this stuff without requiring it.

1. Don't change the current population/cargo/facilities limits, but DO allow some kind of population expansion facility to be modded in that will change the max population allowed the way cargo facilities can be now.

2. Add a population happiness value that is triggered when planetary population is at maximum. By default leave it zero, but this would allow mods to change this and have overpopulation become a real concern.

3. Add an ability for facilites that will allow them to not count against the facliity limits of a planet. This could be used for subteranean facilities, or for "Cloud Cities". (Anybody ever wonder why you can build a facility on a Gas Giant but can't build the same facility in the atmosphere of a rock planet? I do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) Even better than that would be some kind of "Facility Complex" which would count as one facility, but allow you to put a fixed number of "Sub-Facilities" within it. You could almost do this the same way you do ships and stuff now. Have a "complex" design file with different size complexes would allow different facilities, and each sub-faclility would be like a component. If you wanted to change one of the facilities, you could make a new facility complex design and "upgrade" it. "Urban Planning" SEIV style. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But again, make it moddable but not required.

Geoschmo

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Why not just have an "adds X facility slots to a planet" ability for facilities, and a one-per-planet restriction on it??

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

[quote]Originally posted by dogscoff:

Quote:

Why not just have an "adds X facility slots to a planet" ability for facilities, and a one-per-planet restriction on it??

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I suppose either way would work just fine.

I can see a potential problem with your suggestion in that if the facility with that ability is destroyed, you are now over your planetary limit. You would have to scrap however many facilities it takes to get you back below the limit so you can rebuild the facility with the ability.

Of course with my idea when you lose the facility complex, you lose all the facilities in it, so I don't know which would be better.

Either would be nice.

Geoschmo

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

It's possible that with the suggestion of simply having the "Adds X to facility limits", if the facility is destroyed, X random facilities that were built at a later date than that building are destroyed.

It works, since you don't actually know which facilities were built within the new facility if you built it early -- and, if you built it late, the only buildings that would be destroyed would be the ones immediately following it.

But, whatever. ;-)

[ July 05, 2002, 17:35: Message edited by: Spuzzum ]

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, if SE V is as modifiable as SE IV I don't see why you couldn't strip a lot of the economic things out and have a nearly pure wargame if that's what you want. That strikes me as something like buying a Corvette to fry eggs on the engine block, but what the heck... it's your money. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Idea 1 -- there should be several completely different means of increasing planet space.

One would be 'subterranean' options, as you suggest but only a race who can handle that sort of living should be able to use that. Humans would get pretty depressed living 500 feet underground. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Another would be something I've been suggesting for years now: orbital elevators and a 'ringworld' around the planet. Surely you've head of the 'orbital elevator' that might be placed on the equator and allow direct access to orbit without rocket launches? Now imagine a spce station out at geosynchronous orbit so large it forms a complete ring around the planet. Extra facility and population space.

Idea 2 -- Yeah, there's Yet Another Happiness Modifier that would be useful. 'Planet full' or something like that. I'll add it to my list along with 'Per 1M of Enemy Population killed' and 'Per Enemy Planet in System' as well as 'Per each our planets in rioting' modfifier for global empire effects. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Idea 3 - Yes, this is basically a repeat of idea 1. Once there is a 'Population Capacity' power for facilities you'll be able to mod something or other. Designing facilities sounds messy. I'd much prefer to stop building individual facilities, though. Instead have just a 'type' indicator that you've created this sort of complex/facility on the planet and then have 'sliders' for the proportion of the planet's resoures (space, population/labor) to devote to each type. There could then be a new effect to higher technologies. They could reduce the space required for the same level of production, effect, etc. Upgrade your computer complexes from 'mainframe' to 'LAN' & get more space on your planet! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ July 05, 2002, 17:49: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, currently if you capture a planet from a race that has the advanced stoarge technique racial trait, you can be over the limit of facilities. You can also get that way by moving wrong atmosphere pop to a planet and removing the right atmosphere pop, thus converting it to a domed colony. In either case you are now over the limit on facs and the excess is not destroyed. I assumed this would be the same way.

Geoschmo

[ July 05, 2002, 17:54: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

Baron, I am not suggesting we strip out any of the exsisting economic factors. I just don't know how much more detail and micromanagment I can handle. Of course as you said before, if the ministers were more reliable then they could be trusted to take care of a lot of this stuff, unless I get the urge to meddle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

If you think my idea 3 was a repeat of idea 1, you must have misunderstood one of them. Idea 1 was just to add a facility that allows for additional population over the population limit set by the game. Nothing more, nothing less. THe same thing cargo facilities do, but for population instead of for cargo.

Geoschmo

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I like this. This makes me think maybe we are asking for the wrong things here. Instead of modifying the planet, maybe we should be pushing for ships components that can be "living space" for population, instead of just treating them as cargo. I know you have suggested this before as well Baron.

If we could build space stations with population centers that could reproduce, have an effect on the space yards present, produce resources at a rate modified by population. Research? Intel?

The same technique could be used then either for orbital comunities or truly space bound races if you simply cut the tether and not require they be in orbit.

Geo

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

So it comes back to we, the players, need 4 comps:
</font>

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Population </font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">intel </font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">research </font>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">add "x" facilites </font>

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">and the follow ability
</font>

• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">add population happiness value for over population </font>

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Right

Re: New Facility Idea- What\'s your opinion ?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">OH #@*^% !! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif
I had no idea that AST increased the number of facility slots! This totally changes how one sets up their pirate or nomad race. SJ, can I still change my PBW race http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ?

And then for introducing "subterranean" as a racial trait, all I need to do is copy and tweek the AST. A wee bit easier than what I thought was required.

[ July 05, 2002, 19:43: Message edited by: jimbob ]