Proportions....

oleg · #1 January 27th, 2003, 07:46 PM

OK, does anybody check Proportions with the newest SE patch ? I'm still at work and cannot do myself.

Crimson · #2 January 27th, 2003, 07:48 PM

So the new ? is how is the new patch going to effect your MOD and it's release time table.

PvK · #3 January 27th, 2003, 07:48 PM

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Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:

quote:
Originally posted by PvK:
What are you thinking about Starliner Modules?

Compared with a stack of cargo I components the overall costs are slightly higher, as far as I recall from here. The organics are more expensive, the minerals go down a bit, but overall you have to pay more. Plus, the medium transports with sl modules get a malus in defense. Because of the over-proportional higher costs, I rarely use the higher cargo II+III also, but that's another story.

If I recall correctly, Starliner Modules, and high-tech Cargo Bays are both intentionally more expensive than their counterparts, because they represent attempts to do what some players asked for - the ability to use high technology to stuff as much cargo into a design as possible. The Starliner Modules help for mass exodus in minimum time (reduces build costs by distributing resource types used) and in some cases for more cost-effective population transports (both by spending orgs, and by increasing capacity per ship, which divides down the other non-cargo costs of the ship). The high-tech cargo bays are good when you want a more capacious transport of other types. Cargo Bay I remains the cheapest component for simply transporting some units, when your design has enough space that you don't feel like maximizing capacity with expensive tech.

There's a similar situation with armor - you have to decide whether you want to max out structure or save some resources to buy something else as well.

Quote:

quote:
Originally posted by PvK:
I don't think the "Upgrade All Facilities" button will do that - will it?

I am not quite sure what your question is about. With the upgrade all Facilities button all of the Facilities in progress (which could be many years/centuries in Proportions) upgrade to the highest facilities available. I often use this (maybe I am kind of cheating by doing this?) and start building nature shrine II and in parallel I research shrines III and then I press upgrade all facilities so this entry changes to nature shrine III. But on the other hand this procedure also creates a mess in almost everyone of the space port, cities, resupply and similar facilities.

That's what I was asking... sigh. I didn't realize it would change facilities in progress. Unfortunately, this adds another tradeoff where players who want to spend time fighting the interface can get better performance. I guess it has the trade-off that you often won't want to upgrade everything, so often it will do more damage than it gains.

One reason it would be hard to make all upgrades always desirable (if I wanted to) is that there is a big difference in Proportions between construction rates of small colonies versus developed worlds. A high-tech homeworld can upgrade Research Center I to Research Megaplex III in 0.4 turns, on average. But a new colony would take much longer, and will get much better results in terms of time and in terms of cost and in terms of output, by building a bunch of Research Center I's.

Another reason is that I added trade-offs of investment - expensive long-term performance versus cheap short-term performance. In the middle of a war, it often makes more sense to build weapons and fast/cheap facilities rather than expensive terraforming and infrastructure development.

PvK

PvK · #4 January 27th, 2003, 07:52 PM

Mainly the new patch is going to make 3.0 possible, since I have been meaning to add and change weapons to take advantage of the new damage types now that they work correctly.

I think I'll hope that this week you guys test and find any issues, and make any brilliant Last-minute suggestions. Maybe I'll post a beta 2.5.3 tonight so you guys can test that and give feedback, and then I'll try to post the final 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 this weekend, if time allows.

PvK

PvK · #5 January 27th, 2003, 08:05 PM

Ok, I made a quick beta Version for you folks. 2.5.3BETA is available at: THIS LINK. It includes the modded 3rd party races and everything, so it's about 4 megabytes.

Let me know what's broken.

PvK

PsychoTechFreak · #6 January 28th, 2003, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by PvK:
If I recall correctly, Starliner Modules, and high-tech Cargo Bays are both intentionally more expensive than their counterparts, because they represent attempts to do what some players asked for - the ability to use high technology to stuff as much cargo into a design as possible. The Starliner Modules help for mass exodus in minimum time (reduces build costs by distributing resource types used) and in some cases for more cost-effective population transports (both by spending orgs, and by increasing capacity per ship, which divides down the other non-cargo costs of the ship). The high-tech cargo bays are good when you want a more capacious transport of other types. Cargo Bay I remains the cheapest component for simply transporting some units, when your design has enough space that you don't feel like maximizing capacity with expensive tech.

There's a similar situation with armor - you have to decide whether you want to max out structure or save some resources to buy something else as well.

Ah, I understand, and that's now ok with me. I often use a mix of higher tech cargos with cargo I to achieve 2kT or 3kT. Maybe my small starliner module problem is because I always do not know (yet) where to spend all of the minerals to not exceed the stock limits. Mostly I start with producing fighters/mines which make up a nice defense barrier in Proportions. But when I am going to max out the ship fleets, I expect to reconsider the sl modules to save minerals from about midgame on.

PTF

[ January 28, 2003, 08:45: Message edited by: PsychoTechFreak ]

Fyron · #7 January 28th, 2003, 10:55 AM

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SE3 fighters - slow, weak, easy to kill, and unable to move out of the sector they are launched in.

That doesn't work. Fighters get 1 MP even if they have no strategic movement generating engines.

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dogscoff, your suggestions are mostly in line with my Foundations mod design, and some can appear in 3.0, though not in 2.5.x because folks like Fryon don't want the tech tree to change.

Its just bad form to force changes like that on games in progress. I really did not relish having to have all of my ship designs suddenly made obselete and having to research a whole lot of new technologies to build them agian in order to get a few bugs fixed.