Colony ships, for sale cheap!

PvK · #1 March 15th, 2002, 08:56 AM

Yes, several of the events become more interesting in Proportions, because things take more effort to build up. A couple of times I've found myself doing all I can to evacuate populations with large fleets of transports.

The maintenance costs is a good idea and I'm glad it works. I agree that military installations should cost maintenance, although it will need to be balanced carefully and tested to see what good values are. In the early game there is an abundance of resources, but fleet maintenance is already pretty expensive. If facilities cost too much, it might be really hard to make much net forward progress at all. Take your game a bit further into the "mid game," and see if you're able to develop a helpful infrastructure.

Another neat thing might be to make pre-arcology urban developments consume more organics than they produce.

Have you been using fleets of transports to increase build rates? Cities can take forever if you don't, but if you can get enough population, then they become more practical investments. Of course, if you have enemies, those parades of transports should probably be guarded...

PvK

PvK · #2 March 15th, 2002, 08:59 AM

Oh, as for the AI, it sucks at developing colonies in Proportions Versions before the not-yet-released 1.5. This is fixed in the Version I'm about to release, and it might be ok even if you add maintenance costs, but it depends on how expensive they are.

PvK

Rlaney · #3 March 15th, 2002, 11:46 AM

I added -25 minerals -100 organics and -25 radioactives to the research center. The interesting thing is that on a new planet it comes out to -6 -25 -6. Be interesting to see if the cost increases as the population grows but I guess that would actually make a kind of sense as more people means more maintenance if not necessarily more productivity. BTW...I'm playing with finite resources turned on, I'm just guessing here but this WASN'T meant to be played with that option on was it!?!? LOL. My economy is collapsing...I can't maintain my Navy... I feel so Russian.

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]

PvK · #4 March 15th, 2002, 12:35 PM

Ya, the reason is that your "maintenance" is actually negative production, so the maintenance cost will be in proportion to the amount of points generated by the facility, which is based in large part on the population of the planet. The curve is not as severe as the construction rate curve, though.

And no, limited resources will lead to disaster, because the cultural centers will eat away all of your homeworld's resources... you would need to add a powerful value improvement ability to cultural centers in order for Proportions to work with limited resources. I'll put a warning about that in the next readme file.

PvK

Rlaney · #5 March 15th, 2002, 01:28 PM

I figured that the resources thing was somethin like that. I modified the production curve down to what the sy rate was at in the settings modifiers, just kinda made more sense to me. I kinda like the finite resources thing though. It's definately a challenge. I'm spending alot of time layin out miner sats(dropped robos from 100t to 50t to make this possible without extreme research) and am furiously working towards solar collectors. I think they are Crystal tech so i may have to change that to make them accessible to others too.

Ok, I added a 10% plus to change resource value on the Cultural Center and upped the cost as high as I could so that you'd need to be really determined and patient to build them at all. The colony culture centers I didn't mess with but I don't think the homeworld centers should be buildable except on homeworld. Of course if you lose some.... ok maybe a 4% or 5% on the colony ones. thsi makes your homeworld extremely valuable and you'd better defend it appropriately.

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]

New problem, value changes don't seem to work with finite resources on. hmmm.... maybe add in solar generation?

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]

PvK · #6 March 15th, 2002, 08:51 PM

Heh, you increased the cost of cultural centers?

It already takes about a hundred years to create a CC even on a homeworld with five billion people...

I'll just say that if you're planning to play 100 years against the computer, I'd recommend patching to 1.5 when it comes out, because the AI will do a much better job of doing something meaningful in the meantime. In 1.3, after 100 years almost all their colonies will have nothing on them but a CC under construction at about 25% complete, I would think. 1.5 will fix this, but you'll have to re-apply your tweaks.

PvK

PvK · #7 March 15th, 2002, 08:57 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Rlaney:
[QB]New problem, value changes don't seem to work with finite resources on. hmmm.... maybe add in solar generation?

Really? I'm sure people have reported using value improvement plants in finite resources games, which use abilities like:

Planet - Change Minerals Value

Maybe it is based on a percentage of the resources remaining, so if you're down to 0, you can't improve them... ?

PvK