[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by 7o62x39:
Would be very interested in a "realism" based Sol Centered galaxy for IV Gold.

Seen Proportions?

Mining low G comets and asteroids is a hell of a lot easier than high G planets (ie gravity wells).

Hence, asteroids have a much higher resource percentage than planets.

I personally am in the Fermi (where are they?) camp believing there are very very few intelligent species AND/OR very many practical barriers to interstellar travel/colonization. (Sorry, no worm holes!)

Probably true, but that doesn't do much for a space exploration game, does it?

I don't like colonization on high/low G planets (relative to your homeword) without very costly gravity tech, which still limits the economic value of these planets. Likewise I don't care for high value/ population colonization on planets without breathable atmospheres. Therefore, atmospheric/biospheric engineering tech and expense is critical to realism.

You sort of get that in SEIV in that you get a much lower number of facility slots on planets with a different atmosphere. Yeah, gravity probably ought to play a role as well, but you gotta draw the line between realism and playability somewhere (somebody should have told the MOO3 designers that...)

[Most sci-fi is way too Malthusian. "Resources" are way too important to Communist Central Planning Technocrats and SciFi writers. The tech to manipulate Earth based mass and generate energy is far more probable/economically realistic than the tech to mine the universe. Once you get to anti-matter annihilation energy tech, the only thing you need in large quantities in deep space is any kind of mass to excellerate out the back of your ship.

The "resource exploitation/guns-or-butter" model of strategy gaming has been with us for ages, and probably will stay that way - if only for competitive game mechanics.

The goal of any realistic inter-stellar space travel is:

#1 find/colonize Earth like planets
#2 find others
#3 conduct xeno-archeology (if past dead civilization are found).
#4 build infastructure to extend your reach further out.
#5 find planets that can be engineered into Earth like planets

Well, SEIV comes pretty close to this, in most respects...

I hate sci-fi weapons. The idea of firing no/low yield cannon ball like objects drives me nuts...
If I literally hit you with any object, other than you running at high V into my "sand" mine field, you're dead.

Indeed. Look what a little chunk of ice did to the Space Shuttle. If anything, most sci-fi weaponry is too complex. Why waste time and energy hauling a huge laser into space when a pea-shooter (literally!) will yield the same results?

A 1950's tactical nuke projectile does more damage than a Star Trek ship-ship weapon.
But that's my 2 cents. Good luck on your project!

If you're out of the bLast radius too...