Proportions mod: So confusing!

[Mylon]

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...)?

[PvK]

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

[Mylon]

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.

[Mylon]

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.

[Mylon]

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.

[Sinapus]

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

[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:
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.

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

[PvK]

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

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

[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:
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.

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

[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:
...
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.

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