Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Well I just fired up the latest Version of proportions and already I'm somewhat lost. It seems that a huge amount of the facilities are redundant, if not plain useless.

Settlements cannot be upgraded into cities, and seem in themselves pretty useless. Cultural Centers and Colony World Cultural Centers are duplicates of each other. Many of the buildings are replaced by higher tech Versions before they're even constructed (Ship training). There also seems to be parallel development of the same basic structures (Mineral miner facility, mineral miner complex, ect). The sheer number of facilities already promises to make finding the right one among the list a little bothersome, given how the mod tries to focus on upgrading facilities rather than building higher level ones.

Am I misunderstanding something in thinking many of these structures to be useless? The update list of Proportions said that upgrading was removed from portions of the city development tree due to how it was "abused". I would suggest increasing the cost of the settlements instead of removing the tree entirely to make the lowest level (no research/intel points) more appealing if it can be upgraded rather than being replaced.

As a suggestion, which should I focus on? Building cities, or building individual structures (research facilities, mineral extraction, ect...)?

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Thanks for the Feedback, Mylon!

One of the themes of Proportions is that there is often no single "right" choice, and that few things are actually useless, even if their appeal might not be seen immediately.

One of the main trade-off choices in colony development is a matter of time and resource investment. In general, however, it is most efficient to "fill up the slots" with cheap facilities first, and then steadily upgrade or scrap and replace them with larger ones. It is inefficient to build a Complex or Megacomplex if you haven't already used up all the slots you intend for that type on ordinary-sized facilities.

Building a spaceyard to increase planetary development is usually worthwhile for a planet with more than a few slots. Shipping population there is also very important, if you want the colony to develop with any speed. The resource value of a planet is of course a major factor - cities are of course best to build on planets with high values in all resources.

Generally it won't be possible to fully develop ALL colonies at once - a few of the best ones in good locations should be concentrated on, while the others can be slowly built up, and a resupply & spaceyard network is important to develop if you want to have reasonable fleet mobility in your part of space.

On a good planet, urban facilities (city +) are the best ones to have, but are major investments of time and resources, so they are not always the best ones to build, at least not at once. I recommend only building them on planets in defendable positions, and only after filling up most or all of the planets' slots with small facilities. Generally you really want to ship at least 20M population there and build a spaceyard there before trying to build a city. An exception is a Tiny planet with high resource values in all slots - these may be best starting with a small city, and then upgrading.

Another approach is to let your opponents build colonies while you build military bases and invasion fleets... and then take their colonies...

I'll look at the settlement and community facilities again, but I'm not sure there is any better way to do it given the intrinsic SE4 upgrade system. Some players specifically requested a way to make a small civilian presence on a colony without building up a full-scale city. If upgrades are allowed, SE4 with always charge 50% to upgrade to any higher level, which means there is a limit to the span of costs that can be offered along one upgrade path, without creating a cost shortcut that makes ordinary construction hugely inefficient.

I'm not sure what you mean about training facilities. Anyone can build level one facs by default, which train up to +5. The level two facs are +7 ... probably worth it, but 2% isn't a big deal - the research might be better in other areas. Training Fac III requies another level of Military Science and Advanced Military Science, so not all races will bother to rush for that, particularly since it only trains up to +9. Again, it's worth it, but there are a number of other R&D paths which are just as useful, or more so.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Well I see what you're talking about with the matter of upgrades. It would, after all, be quite silly to put down a settlement and immediately get a Cultural Center at half price.

I suppose not much can be done given how the program handles upgrades. It if boosted construction by giving a kickstart of half of the original structure's value, then having a long upgrade tree (including facilities to complexes upgrades) would be more feasable. I just feel bad about having to sacrifice the facility to build over it when upgrading allows it to still be productive during the construction.

Anyway, I would like to suggest some way of making transportation of slightly larger portions of colonists easier to obtain. A medium freightor cannot transport 2M worth of colonists.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

I noticed another problem with the upgrading... It seems that whenever I upgrade, I can only upgrade to the highest building available. Ie... If I build a minor city, I can only upgrade it to a metropolis. Probably another hardcoded problem.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Suggestion: Would it be possible for each city to give the colony a (stackable) production bonus? I'm thinking it'd be pretty impractical to build cultural centers even on a ring world due to the limited production capacity.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Another suggestion: Why not just one type of colony settlement sort of facility instead of one for each planet type?

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">True. Hard-code problem. That's why I have some cheap extra techs so you can at least choose what the highest level is.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Because I was using the graphics for the colony type, and it shows a colony of the appropriate type. I thought it was neat. For a later Version I may make them a bit distinct from each other.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I tried that originally. It's not possible because the game won't let you build more than one facility with construction ability on a planet.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well you usually don't "have" to scrap the settlement for a long long time - you can just add a city to it. It's usually worth keeping around since it has greater total abilities than most regular facilities.

As for freighters, you haven't researched far enough. You can get 2M on a med. transport if you research cargo and/or starliner modules high enough. Of course, you can also just build more ships.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

On huge domed planets, the facility slots fill up pretty quickly and you have to destroy a settlement to build a city, which can take many a turn without a space yard.

Medium freighters + Population Liner III can only hold 1M, still. Having to get module IV or so is a bit much to research just to double what you can do with module I.

Yet another hardcoded problem I noticed: Space yards make the penalties trivial. A colony with 1M population can build at 2000 per resource per turn.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

"Yet another hardcoded problem I noticed: Space yards make the penalties trivial. A colony with 1M population can build at 2000 per resource per turn."

Umm, not in the Proportions game I'm playing on PBW.. I have a breathable world with a space yard II, 105 million people, and it only produces at 1370, not 2500 (which is what the yard would do normally)

Phoenix-D

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">An average empire can put five slots on a huge domed colony. It usually takes a few years to build even one city. I don't see anything out of line.

Quote:

Medium freighters + Population Liner III can only hold 1M, still. Having to get module IV or so is a bit much to research just to double what you can do with module I.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, it's my opinion that it is a bit much to try to get 2M colonists and their necessities onto a medium-sized ship, from the design standpoint of Proportions. Doubling the capacity of a population transport isn't something I think should be a casual achievement. On the other hand, it doesn't take any research to just build two ships and fleet them...

Quote:

Yet another hardcoded problem I noticed: Space yards make the penalties trivial. A colony with 1M population can build at 2000 per resource per turn.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">As Phoenix-D pointed out, you're mistaken about that.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Check http://www.liquid2k.com/mylon/screen1.jpg and http://www.liquid2k.com/mylon/screen2.jpg

I couldn't figure out how to get both population and production in the same screenshot, but this works. Is this a bug?

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

The first screenshot isn't loading... oh, my fault for using a crummy web browser like Internet Explorer. Opera shows it just fine.

13M is a 35% ship yard rate factor, so it does look a bit high at 2075 construction rate, though it depends. I'd need to know what tech level your construction yard is, and what your other modifiers are. Are you Hardy Industrialists? What is your construction aptitude level? Do you have any system-wide construction-accelerating facilities? Etc. You could send me your saved game, if you like.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Oh... I guess those population modifiers don't modify bonuses in themselves. So building a spaceyard doesn't give me a 45% production bonus, it gives me a 300% production bonus (-75% to -30%).

Well... I guess hardy industrialist pretty useful for low level colonies!

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Building a spaceyard dosen't give you a build rate bonus, it simply sets the base build rate to the abilities of the space yard.
All your rate modifiers are then added up and multiplied with the new base rate.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Building a spaceyard gives you the effect of a "build rate bonus" if you have the hardy industrialist trait (which gives a bonus to "planetary space yards"). IOW, the unmodded game allows planets to build at a base rate of 2000/2000/2000 without a yard; adding a Spaceyard I (without HI trait) keeps the base build rate at 2000/2000/2000, but you can build ships as well; adding a SY1 when your race has the HI trait gives a base build rate of 2500/2500/2500; if you also use racial points for increasing space yard rate, you can get even better figures (I've got a game going (non-Proportions) where I took space yard rate to 20% bonus, plus HI, and a SY1 on a new colony allows building at 2900/2900/2900; new colonies without a SY only build at 2000/2000/2000.

That appears to be what Mylon has done as well, since he refers to a "45% bonus" by building a space yard facility...

[ September 09, 2002, 18:02: Message edited by: DirectorTsaarx ]

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Another question on Proportions design.

The cities and cultural centers have phased shields. This makes it nearly impossible to take out a homeworld in early or mid-game, even one of a minor race (we are talking about 20000 shield points!).

When you DO want to take one out, however, null-space weapons (and shiled-damaging weapons, if you're temporal) become priceless.

Doesn't it create imbalance towards shield-damaging weapons?

Thanks -- Aub

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Heh... Is what I'm concerned with is someone building like 10 space yards over their homeworld (or any non-domed planet) and dedicating most of them towards weapon platform/satellite construction. I know I do it!

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

The phased shield ability of cultural centers isn't perfect. Ideally, I would just give the facilities large amounts of hit points, but that is not possible. I may experiment with re-adjusting the "damage per population" in settings.txt, as I believe this still affects the damage required to destroy any facility. However there still isn't a perfect way to express the difference between the damage required to destroy, say, a resupply depot, and the damage required to destroy an entire civilization.

It's true that shield-skipping weapons end up being powerful against cultural centers, but who's to say that a null space weapon would not in reality have a great effect against at atmosphere? At any rate, there are still other ways to vaporize a homeworld's shields, such as planetary weapons, anti-planet drones, fighter-bombers, and shield depleters.

This is one case where I didn't see many choices in what I could do, but there was a very important balance issue, which was that it is a major game event if a homeworld is destroyed or captured, so it should be possible to defend one, and take a major effort to destroy or conquer one.

As Mylon mentions, players can and should keep some potent defenses at a homeworld. The cargo capacity is huge, so the 20K intrinsic shields are just part of the difficulty in attacking one. Defense bases and weapon platforms and fighters and satellites and drones and troops can be amassed, and should be expected.

Consider too that major effects can be caused simply by blockading a homeworld. That in itself has caused some human players to concede defeat.

PvK

[ September 10, 2002, 07:04: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

I'll email you those save files latter today. Meanwhile, a few suggestions for Proportions:

Cultural centers. I'd like to see them at least halved in price. It _should_ be reasonable that a homeworld could actually build 18 of them within a reasonable time before developing useful space flight. Yes, they may be massive in size, and 50 years may make sense for their size, but that is also 500 turns.

Along the same vein, perhaps population production bonuses should be increased significantly. Most colonies with about 100 M population can produce almost half of what a homeworld can. I would think a homeworld would be more productive. Also, the population growth should be bonus significantly increased in cost. A +10 bonus to population growth is fairly cheap and is actually added directly on despite other modifiers (bad planet conditions, angry, ect), thus allowing a population to double in say 4-5 years rather than 15.

Another thing I would like to see would be enhanced cities based on other tech advances. This would probably be a pain to impliment, as there could easily be 81 or so combinations for each level of city. The idea is that a level of applied research would not only improve the quality of research centers, but the research bonus given by cities as well. Likewise for organics extraction, mineral extraction, ect. If this is followed through, I would suggest removing the current upgrade-chains in the current city lineup to make this a bit easier to handle. Likewise, without the city chain cities should be made somewhat cheaper (where a metropolis used to cost 65k (minor city + upgrade), they would now cost 100k! Upgrading the cultural centers on the homeworld would probably never happen unless there is a dramatic reduction in cost (or production in bonus), but it would be nice to add upgraded Versions for other well developed planets.

Considering how most other techs double in usefulness with the second level of research, it would make sense that this would apply to starliner modules as well. And I keep buging you because paying for the life support, bridge, engines, and solar collectors (They don't go very far without them!) gets expensive if you have to pay for 20 rather than 10.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

I'm a keen proportions player, and I would say that although Mylon's suggestions in the previous post are well thought out, I would vote against all of them except the increased range of cities. Sorry Mylon http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif I like the economics as they are now. The new range of cities would be an utter nightmare to implement and upgrade, but would be cool. Maybe you should try to get a more flexible upgrade system into the next patch before attempting to implement them.

One thing I will suggest though is a set of combination bonus facilities - ie fleet+ship training, citizen databank+computer complex etc. Have it so you can upgrade to them from the singular Versions.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This sounds like the real world, which is what I think PvK is trying to mirror with the proportions mod. After all, I bet your local post office is not a brand new building with the latest and greatest sorting technology. Heck, my post office in a town of 300 is nothing more than a shed with a space heater for the winter, quite literally. In the town nearby there is a larger brick postal building, a UPS agent, 2 internet providers, and a courier service. How many different ways do you need to send a message? They are redundant, but each has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. I use all of them at different times for different reasons. Proportions mimics this by giving you choices. Sometimes they are confusing choices, and sometimes you will make bad choices, but this real world.

Thanks PvK. I want to encourage you to continue making the mod more complex and more confusing. For a newby to the SEIV universe, the standard game has plenty of complexity. But for those of us more experienced with SEIV, the standard game is good, but has lost it's "Fog of War" appeal. IMHO a good wargame recreates the uncertainty of conflict and the ability to make bad choices. Standard SEIV has done a very good job of this for a wargame, but the proportions mod takes it even a step further.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Agreed. I would put it another way and say that Proportions takes SEIV and pushes it even further from being simply a wargame into the territory of "empire simulator".

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">sorry that im dumb, but why not?

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Facilities don't have "hit points"; they're destroyed collaterally with the planet's population.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

hmm, thats right. why do smartbombs do 200 points of damage, then? does that need to be changed if the damage to kill a population unit is increased?

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">IIRC, it doesn't. It also looks like one hit, regardless of damage, will kill at least one population unit. Though that was Last tested over a year ago, pre-Gold. Dunno if it's been changed or not.

Also, I think damage for neutron bombs is something the game reads to figure out how many people it kills per hit. Haven't really tested that, though.

[ September 10, 2002, 20:42: Message edited by: Sinapus ]

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">18 of them? Well at 100 years a piece, that's only 1800 years. It took Earth more than twice that long to produce substantially fewer than that.

Also note that you can build a colony that is more productive than a cultural center, and produces exactly what you want it to, in far less time than it takes to build a cultural center. It won't be as compact and it won't have the exact same bonuses, but that's the difference between building heaps of infrastructure, and actually developing a culture. Or, at least, Proportions' representation of that difference in SE4 terms.

I do think though that I will probably, eventually, adjust the abilities and cost of the "Colony World Cultural Center" facility. Maybe even before anyone succeeds in actually building one in a game... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Quote:

Along the same vein, perhaps population production bonuses should be increased significantly. Most colonies with about 100 M population can produce almost half of what a homeworld can. I would think a homeworld would be more productive. Also, the population growth should be bonus significantly increased in cost. A +10 bonus to population growth is fairly cheap and is actually added directly on despite other modifiers (bad planet conditions, angry, ect), thus allowing a population to double in say 4-5 years rather than 15.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I've considered this sort of idea before. Originally, cultural centers did have a construction ability, but that meant you could never build more than one on a planet, or replace one on a homeworld. It also resulted in the ability to produce very expensive items in a very short time, because of the single planetary build queue. There are rationalizations for how a homeworld should in fact be able to snap together a capital ship in one turn, but on reflection, I kind of like the existing system, in part because you can't build hugely expensive things in a short time.

What you can do (and most humans and AI seem to do this) is actually build a bunch of construction yards in space over a homeworld. This has a number of advantages (from a design/interestingness perspective) over giving a homeworld a huge construction ability. The advantages, as I see them, are:

* You can build as much as your actual infrastructure investment (in BSY's) lets you.
* You are still limited to long build times for expensive items.
* You have to consider the cost and maintenance cost of your production facilities.
* The enemy can raid your orbital bases without having to battle your homeworld to the death.
* If enemy blockaders can't get close enough to destroy your homeworld BSY's, they can still produce defense forces even if enemy blockade and/or ground troops are causing your homeworld to riot.

Quote:

Another thing I would like to see would be enhanced cities based on other tech advances. This would probably be a pain to impliment, as there could easily be 81 or so combinations for each level of city. The idea is that a level of applied research would not only improve the quality of research centers, but the research bonus given by cities as well. Likewise for organics extraction, mineral extraction, ect. If this is followed through, I would suggest removing the current upgrade-chains in the current city lineup to make this a bit easier to handle. Likewise, without the city chain cities should be made somewhat cheaper (where a metropolis used to cost 65k (minor city + upgrade), they would now cost 100k! Upgrading the cultural centers on the homeworld would probably never happen unless there is a dramatic reduction in cost (or production in bonus), but it would be nice to add upgraded Versions for other well developed planets.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not a bad idea, although I wish I had the time/energy to design and mod 81 city variants, not to mention the other stuff I would rather do first. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Of course, what you can do is use the existing rate-modifying facilities already in the game to gain multipliers to standard facility abilities. See Robot Factory, Mineral Scanner, etc.

Quote:

Considering how most other techs double in usefulness with the second level of research, it would make sense that this would apply to starliner modules as well. And I keep buging you because paying for the life support, bridge, engines, and solar collectors (They don't go very far without them!) gets expensive if you have to pay for 20 rather than 10.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hehe. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Of course you can feel free to do so for your own enjoyment. Another idea would be to halve population mass to 500kT, if you just want faster development. However the point of having these hardships in Proportions is of course to make it the Herculean task it actually would be (actually, I think it's pretty easy compared to "reality") to move many millions of colonists to inhospitable alien worlds and turn them into self-supportive and productive colonies. Another reason starliner modules don't double at tech level 2 is because of my imagination of how difficult it would be to overcome the basic and very enormous physical requirements of moving a million folks and keeping them alive on board and shipped with enough stuff to allow them to do anything but fight for survival (and probably lose) at their destination.

If I were to implement this suggestion, it would probably be by calling the current level I, "level II", and then defining a level I that was twice as lame as the current level I. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

To be clear, Mylon, I'm not saying any of your suggestions aren't good or wouldn't make the mod more fun for many people. And, thanks extremely much for the suggestions and feedback - I love to hear what people think and their experiences with the mod. The feedback is what's inspired me to keep developing the mod.

I'm sure that some severe lightening up of some of my scales could make the game more appealing to many players. And, I invite you or anyone to do variants to suit their own tastes. It's just not quite what I've been trying to do with my Version of it.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Sure, it took Earth twice as long to build less than 18 cultural centers, but also consider Earth's population (the 6-7 billion mark we're at now is a pretty recent thing. It wasn't always like that!), our technology level (I assume a world that can build economical space ships would be able to produce more), and the fact that our planet is hardly a single entity of people like the united force a player controls in SEIV. Imagine what we could do if we stopped blowing each other up and built stuff together for a mere two centuries. I'd imagine we'd build those 18 cultural centers pretty quickly. I don't really expect homeworlds to build dreadnauts in one turn, but I would like to see production bonuses for larger populations increased to some degree to make facility building a little faster.

As for population transport... Why not make it more expensive to research level one and level two? The idea is that it still should be cheaper than building a battleship sized population transport in terms of research costs. A counter to the ease of population transport, as I've already suggested, is to decrease population reproduction and likewise increase the point cost of faster reproduction. This way an empire can spread faster, but not necessarily develop faster.

The main reason I like cities is because of their compactness. One idea of making the city variants with much less hassle would be to only make 3 levels or so for each city. Instead of discovering a new city type each time you research applied research, mineral producion, applied intelligence, ect, given a new level of city when one level of every field is researched. Thus, the Metropolis Level 2 wouldn't appear until level 2 was reached in mineral production, applied research, applied intelligence, radioactives extraction, organics exctraction, and possily political science (on the grounds that urban pacification might help a little). Under this system, it might be wise to tone down the level 1 cities a little.

Another idea would be to make a space yard-city combination in addition to the cultural world center that could possibly replace the space-cities that have a resupply depot built into them. This way one can bypass the 1-production limit by having one special production center and the rest of the buildings as other urban-type structures.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Just a clarification for my enhanced cities idea, since even to me it seems a little confusing the way I said it:

Instead of having a hundred or so city varients that reflect each individual advances, cities could instead reflect these individual advances but at less frequent intervals. These invervals could be marked based on levels in every area. When one level of every applicable field is researched, only then does a new level of a city become available. Thus, to uncover metropolis level two, one must research one level of applied research, one level of all three extractions, one level of applied intelligence _and_ perhaps some other appropriate techs (applied political science?). Thus, the advancement of cities based on other technology could be modelled without designing a hundred or so variants of each city to reflect smaller advancements in the individual areas. It isn't perfect, but it's a nice approximation. I'd also like to see easier upgrading in certain manners (upgrading metropolis level 1 to metropolis level 2 should be much faster than the current 1/2 of the time of building a new one, for example), but this area isn't necessarily a mod issue. I just think SEIV wasn't really designed to handle expensive facilities this way.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Pvk,

BTW, thanks for all your work on the proportions mod. I have a few questions though that I didn't seem to find in your read me files:

1. Ruins: I've only played two games (whiched ended prematurely) so far, but I don't seem to be getting a technology bump when colonizing ruins. But it does seem that my current projects seem to finish faster. Have you changed the free technology for an amount of research points?

2. Starting with 1 planet on your mod, seems very slow, so I bumped a 2nd game to starting with 3 plants. Even with average/bad planets, it feels like overkill. Does the game hard code the starting resources for the 2nd and 3rd planets to be like the first or is there a way to tone down the starting resources on the 2nd and 3rd planets?

3. I also think that the amount of engines on the Rock colony ship is a bit low. Movement of only 2 squares until you get to tech 3 on engines (and then it only goes up to 3) is a bit too slow IMO. While I understand you like this, if I wanted to change this to make my colony ships only 1 square faster what would I need to change and where.

BTW, while this isn't on the topic of your mod, what victory conditions do you normally choose and why? I don't particularly like the total points because everytime I reach that point all the races declare war on me (not exactly my goal).

Thanks for your time.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

The idea with proportions is that since everything goes slower, you just generate turns more often. I can easily run through 100 turns before I really get anywhere in the game. This is probably a problem when playing against other players, though, as 100 turns will likely take 100 days.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">18 of them? Well at 100 years a piece, that's only 1800 years. It took Earth more than twice that long to produce substantially fewer than that.[/quote]
Not really. We've gone from pure agricultural to our modern infrastructure in about 200 years.

An advanced space-faring society shouldn't need large populations to create great amounts of resources anyways, as those kinds of things can be automated.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Pvk,

Another thing I've noticed. I've been trying to start a new game and if I select an Existing Race template, I get a error (unable to open file). I can create a new race emp file without a problem.

However, when I check all races scores visible to all races and start the game, the ABBIDON and the EEE have ridicuously high research/population and scores compared to all the rest of the races. Any idea why this is happening? It's consistant, you should be able to see it for yourself or I can send you a save game if you wish. I'm using Version 1.78.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

I've had to work Saturday and Sunday this weekend, but here goes. I'll reply to nitey first, because his are easiest to answer:

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanks for the feedback!

Quote:

1. Ruins: I've only played two games (whiched ended prematurely) so far, but I don't seem to be getting a technology bump when colonizing ruins. But it does seem that my current projects seem to finish faster. Have you changed the free technology for an amount of research points?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, there's no way to mod research points into ruins. What I did do is add more ruins, but make most of them red herrings. Ruins in Proportions just indicate the possibility of something worth analyzing. You don't know if you'll get anything until you go get it.

I also made it so that after acquiring an ancient tech area, you need to reasearch it before you can build anything with it.

Quote:

2. Starting with 1 planet on your mod, seems very slow, so I bumped a 2nd game to starting with 3 plants. Even with average/bad planets, it feels like overkill. Does the game hard code the starting resources for the 2nd and 3rd planets to be like the first or is there a way to tone down the starting resources on the 2nd and 3rd planets?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, there's no way to change the nature of multiple starting worlds. However, I convinced Malfador to make a change in SE4 1.78 that allows you to set the strength of your homeworld to whatever you like (before 1.78, it used to have a max effective value):

Go to settings.txt in your Proportions/data directory, and edit the lines:

Plr Planet Value Low := 80
Plr Planet Value Medium Percent := 100
Plr Planet Value High := 120

To higher values. If you want twice the homeworld income, double the values, for example. This way homeworlds (only) will have double the resource value (or whatever value you specify).

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3. I also think that the amount of engines on the Rock colony ship is a bit low. Movement of only 2 squares until you get to tech 3 on engines (and then it only goes up to 3) is a bit too slow IMO. While I understand you like this, if I wanted to change this to make my colony ships only 1 square faster what would I need to change and where.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You could take Propulsion Experts or research gravitic drives... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

To change this in the mod, you'd want to go to the Colony Ship entry in VehicleSize.txt and do one of a few possible things:

Option 1) Change "Engines Per Move := 36" to 20. This breaks the scale of the quasi-Netwonian physics, though, if you care. You could increase the mineral cost of the colony ship hull by about 1400 if you want to be more logical about it (approximates the cost of adding extra engines to account for the increased speed).

Option 2) Change "Requirement Max Engines := 8" to 15. The only problem with this is that the AI will not know about this - you'd have to go change all of the AI's to know how many engines to put on a colony ship, or they'd still build slow ones.

Note: Either of the above will start at max base speed 3 and go up by one for each increase in engine tech. Don't do both...

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BTW, while this isn't on the topic of your mod, what victory conditions do you normally choose and why? I don't particularly like the total points because everytime I reach that point all the races declare war on me (not exactly my goal). Thanks for your time.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I usually don't pick any formal, game-enforced victory conditions, because they might end a game at a point where I was still enjoying it. Usually I like to see each empire set their own goals according to what makes sense for them. On PBW, sometimes it is fun and helpful to invent some interesting victory conditions. However, when one player dominates the whole quadrant, it's usually pretty self-evident.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">The emp files have to be created for Proportions. The ones included with Proportions should work. Ones from the original game, or shipsets not made for Proportions, won't work.

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However, when I check all races scores visible to all races and start the game, the ABBIDON and the EEE have ridicuously high research/population and scores compared to all the rest of the races. Any idea why this is happening? It's consistant, you should be able to see it for yourself or I can send you a save game if you wish. I'm using Version 1.78.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I actually did not see this in the few tests I just ran, but I expect that due to your other settings, including un-checking "player homeworlds are all the same size" that they are getting larger planets than the others in your games, probably because they live on Gas Giants, and there are no small Gas Giants. Choosing low value planets will cause this.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">What Version of Proportions do you use (the latest is 2.42) ? In older Proportions Versions there was no separate emp directory and SEIV tried to load default (non-moded) emp. files. That of course create error Messages. If you get latest Version, try to load one of my races (pequeninos, soul hunters or nostropholo). If you still have a problem, let know.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'll give it a look, although it can be a bunch of work to re-do the population effect curve. Mainly though, as I said, I like the heavy constuction to be something that has to be built and maintained in space.

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As for population transport... Why not make it more expensive to research level one and level two? The idea is that it still should be cheaper than building a battleship sized population transport in terms of research costs. A counter to the ease of population transport, as I've already suggested, is to decrease population reproduction and likewise increase the point cost of faster reproduction. This way an empire can spread faster, but not necessarily develop faster.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I don't quite follow what you're suggesting for a change to transport research costs. What do you mean?

As for reducing the reproduction rate, given the way population reproduction rate is calculated in SE4, I think it wouldn't be a very major effect. One has to have a certain minimum population before any difference in repro rates (besides 0% and "greater than 0%") will have on colonies without major population translocation.

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The main reason I like cities is because of their compactness. One idea of making the city variants with much less hassle would be to only make 3 levels or so for each city. Instead of discovering a new city type each time you research applied research, mineral producion, applied intelligence, ect, given a new level of city when one level of every field is researched. Thus, the Metropolis Level 2 wouldn't appear until level 2 was reached in mineral production, applied research, applied intelligence, radioactives extraction, organics exctraction, and possily political science (on the grounds that urban pacification might help a little). Under this system, it might be wise to tone down the level 1 cities a little.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ya, it's a reasonable idea. The SE4 upgrade system is still going to be somewhat problematic, though, since you can only upgrade along one path (and many players seem to like upgrading city->metropolis->etc), and the cost is always half the cost of building one from scratch.

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Another idea would be to make a space yard-city combination in addition to the cultural world center that could possibly replace the space-cities that have a resupply depot built into them. This way one can bypass the 1-production limit by having one special production center and the rest of the buildings as other urban-type structures.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, that's an interesting idea. Hmm. I wonder if it is possible to fool SE4's "one construction fac per planet" limit by upgrading from a fac without a SY to one that has one... that could be an interesting effect. Note though that if that does not work, then it will be impossible to build one of these cities on a planet that already has a shipyard.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You're right - SE4 just doesn't handle complex upgrades. It's really only designed for upgrading to something of about the same cost, like in the standard game.

Your idea is a good one, although I don't know if SE4 would allow upgrades both ways (city->metropolis and city_1->city_2).

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">"18 of them? Well at 100 years a piece, that's only 1800 years. It took Earth more than twice that long to produce substantially fewer than that."

Not really. We've gone from pure agricultural to our modern infrastructure in about 200 years.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If all you care about is the infrastructure, sure. Of course, on the homeworld, there is the advantage that it is the correct atmosphere (composition, pressure, and weather), radiation levels, bioshpere, gravity, and temperature. Overcoming these is part of the massive challenge of creating a productive colony on an alien planet.

A Proportions Cultural center represents more than simply industry and infrastructure, however. It represents the culture, society, history, art, drama, economy, as well as the environment that makes it possible to run and sustain large-scale production, reasearch, and so on so that the planet actually contributes to an empire rather than sucking massive resources just to keep it in existence.

In particular, one of the reasons homeworld research centers are so highly rated compared to colony ones, is because I reject the SE4 premise that research is an additive and transitive phenomenon. Two labs do not research subject A twice as fast as one, and chemistry lab C cannot be switched to researching Applied Intelligence on a moment's notice, nor will it stop researching chemistry because Emperor Juvenile III insists that Political Puppets must be obtained ASAP. So, having cultural centers that cannot be replaced and multiplied during a typical game session, provides a base level of research ability that all empires have, and which will not be warped out of proportion simply by colonizing a hundred alien worlds and mass-producing labs, which is both unrealistic (IMO) and unbalancing.

The ability in itself to multiply your empire's abilities in a few years' time by colonizing alien worlds and turning them into homeworld clones is exactly what Proportions' design premise rejects. Actually attempting such in reality would, it seems to me, lead to complete bankruptcy, so Proportions is actually still quite generous in this from a realism standpoint, in that it can actually still be very worthwhile to do so. It's just not like the standard game, where it's so easy to clone your homeworld that the balance of power hinges on the ability to colonize as fast as possible.

With the change I requested to max homeworld planet value settings in 1.78, however, I might be able to re-do the way some of this works for Proportions 3.0, however. It would probably make sense that homeworlds should have an intrinsically higher value than any alien world, due to the natural habitat.

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An advanced space-faring society shouldn't need large populations to create great amounts of resources anyways, as those kinds of things can be automated.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">True. That's one reason I made the Proportions population effects curve level out pretty drastically after the first 30 million or so.

PvK

[ September 16, 2002, 04:37: Message edited by: PvK ]

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

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

BTW a fan (sorry, I forget which one - Dogscoff? Rollo?) made a utility which auto-runs turns. You could probably get a jump start into a developed game position in Proportions by using this to get to turn 100, or 500, or ... one of the neat things about Proportions (IMO) is that it should extend the interesting play time to several hundred turns (or more) because of the delayed research and development. Especially on High research costs, but even Low or Medium are pretty gradual.

PvK

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Yes, I appreciate the idea of not being able to make homeworld clones easily, but I would like to see making such clones actually possible to some degree. The value improvement plants are in themselves terraforming facilities that adjust gravity, temperature, some air conditions, ect. (and there have been plenty of times when my homeworld has been generated with "unpleasant" conditions).

Still, 500 turns for a race that specializes in fast building (hardy industrialist + 20% space yard rate) is a tad much. 50 turns (5 years!) may seem too short for the description, but that is plenty long building time for one facility and I really doubt that anyone could realistically build more than 3 on any particular planet. And this also makes upgrading them actually possible, if we ever get the ability to upgrade one facility at a time and more levels are added.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well part if the idea is that you would remove the upgrades between cities totally and adjust the costs somewhat (Metropolises would take forever to build if they were actually 100kT! Technically they're only 65 if you build a minor city first, and you get some amount of production for some of the building time), though you _could_ design the cities in a heirarchy of minor city level 1 > minor city level 2 > minor city level 3 > metropolis level 1, ect, but I don't think it's worth the bother. Especially not since there won't be any way to upgrade to minor city level 3 if you have "cities" uncovered.

From my experience, it seems that metropolises are the most useful infrastructure simply because they're really the only facility that produces a decent amount for the investment. The cities between minor and metropolis merely add build time to getting to metropolis, thus lowering their value.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's exactly how Suicide Junkie created his "spaceyard enhancers" (or something like that) in P&N... there's a thread about it around here somewhere, including a sample addition to facilities.txt...

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Oleg,

>> That of course create error Messages. If you get latest Version, try to load one of my races (pequeninos, soul hunters or nostropholo). If you still have a problem, let know. <<

Your races work fine. It's just all the standard races apparently need to be recreated and saved. BTW, I'm using the latest Version 2.4.2 of proportions.

Pvk,

Thanks for your replies. I suspect that the problem is exactly what you mentioned, since the EEE and ABBIDON start on Gas Giants, they probably end up with more starting facilities compared to everyone else thus more research, etc. points. I'm not totally sure I'll mess with the colony ships, as I want to give your method a bit more time to grow on me, but I sure appreciate you telling me how I can go and adjust it if I want.

Thanks!

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

Gas Giant races have bigger homeworlds only if you use "poor homeworld value" - rock/ice start on small while gas still have medium. Normal or good homeworld start gives equal homeworlds to all races.

Re: Proportions mod: So confusing!
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's all that matters for producing materials and constructing ships. Such things would require next to no manpower for an advanced civilization like those in SE4.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">All of which are mostly irrelevant to automated processors, which already exist on ships, and are far more effective than a facility that covers half a continent.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">A planet only requires large amounts of resources from another planet if it cannot produce enough food to feed the population. We're talking about completely untouched planets, with material resources similar to Earth. There's no real reason to send anything to the planet past the initial colony set up materials unless the planet is extremely poor.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">If creating colonies that increase production by an order of magnitude bankrupts the empire, then Britain would have been bankrupted a hundred times over by now. Colonies represent untapped resources, and beyond a very short setup period would easily produce more than they take at the tech levels reached in SE4.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Only for things that actually require population, like research, and creating more population.