Proportions....

minipol · #1 February 2nd, 2003, 03:34 AM

Hi,
i have a small question about the proportions mod. Does it change the AI too like TDM?

minipol · #2 February 2nd, 2003, 04:08 AM

I found the site of the mod so i found the answer to my question.

PvK · #3 February 2nd, 2003, 06:05 AM

Am I misundestanding your suggestion, Oleg? It seems to me this won't do what you say.

For one thing, Proportions population mass is 200 times greater than in the standard game, not 10 times.

For another, if you divide mass by the same amount you multiply capacity, it's not going to have much effect at all on the time it takes to fill up a planet, which I guess is what the AI is now trying to do? (Note the AI stopping at 100 is just a player suggestion - I thought people were saying the 1.84 behavior is to try to fill planets completely. No?)

Also, reproduction rate and mass are two different things. I don't see why making every planet generate population ten times as quickly (more, considering compound effects) would make any more sense. Sure it would mean planets would fully populate more quickly, but it would also mean going back to unrealistic reproduction rates.

Quote:

Originally posted by oleg:
It is possible to get around this nuissance, but it will require a major work by PvK: We can restore population mass and reproduction check to default SE values and scale up population modifiers AND planetary capacity by 10 times. Basically we will have the same Proportions but population unit will be 10 times smaller. Now, it will take reasonable amount of time before AI decides to switch from one planet to another.

oleg · #4 February 2nd, 2003, 04:44 PM

AI is trying to fill planet till it gets 300 population units, AFAIK. my idea is to make 300 pop. units a small amount. I suggest to increase pop. capacity of all planets 10 times, decrease pop. mass 10 times and scale up all population modifiers 10 times in settings.txt. Pop. check should stay same - I made a mistake. Basically it will be the same game, but 1 pop.unit will represent 10 times less people. It is of course remains to be seen how population minister will behave.

oleg · #5 February 2nd, 2003, 06:59 PM

Hurra !! It works ! I increased planet population 10 times (Earth will have 20 billion instead of 2), scaled up population modifiers and decreased pop. mass. Now, SE IV ships 500 (not 300) to a planet than shifts to another ! New 500 is exactly 50 in "unmodded" Proportions. Funny thing happens in Planet with moons. After filling planet, SE ships 500 million people to a moon before going to another planet

. Anyway, it works and works much better than in 1.78 IMHO.
I can post modded data files if you like.

NAV · #6 February 2nd, 2003, 07:11 PM

[quote]Originally posted by PvK:
[QB] (Note the AI stopping at 100 is just a player suggestion - I thought people were saying the 1.84 behavior is to try to fill planets completely. No?)

I was not suggesting any change to Proportion settings, wich are currantly great. I was remarking that in v1.78 the AI sent the Star Liners (Pop Transports) too only the closest breathable colony, after that colony was filled to about 300m it would move on to the next breathable colony and so on. NOW in v1.84 the AI sends it to the closest planet to its Home World, fills it up to about 300m and works out from there. This could be a breathable or worse a domed moon. To me the return overall was much higher whan the AI sent the transports to breathables only.

PvK · #7 February 2nd, 2003, 09:14 PM

I'm with you NAV. I also think it'd be best if the AI's population transport could be specified in the files for each AI, so we could customize it per AI, and to work best with mods that change what makes sense to do.

oleg, I see now, that sounds like it works well, with the only real casualty being that now you can move population with a ship having only 100 kT cargo space, not 1000 kT, which I liked because it kind of made population a different Category from other unit transport. This also of course wouldn't be upgradable for existing games, because their effective population would go down 90%. I'd probably want to add another nine population effect brackets on the low end, to make moving less than ten units to a new colony pretty weak, and I'd want to adjust things like random and intel events, and maybe look at what it does to militia and planetary bombardment.

Since it would be for new games, I think I might actually keep population mass at 1000kT, and then make starliners ten or more times cheaper, and/or maybe slower but more capacious... this might make small starliners useful later into the game, and slow enough that people wouldn't be tempted to use them for invasion transports or carriers etc. Hmm. It will take some more thought. I have the feeling 3.0 will look a lot different from 2.5.3 (if I can find time to figure it all out and complete it).

PvK