Infinitech Mod Starting

[MrToxin]

capnq said:One of the chief criticisms I've seen of SEV is that many tech levels don't give you anything worth researching. (I vaguely recall complaints about needing level 10 of something to build orbital spaceyards? I still don't have SEV to check myself.) Kwok's Balance Mod addresses this, among other things.

Have you looked at PvK's Proportions mod for SEIV? It did a lot of what you propose for making the homeworld much more productive than colonies.

Actually, yes I did look at the Proportions Mod for SEIV and that's where I got some of my ideas from. It's a cool mod and I loved playing it, but I never was keen on the idea of ONLY your homeworld ever being a huge production place. I was more keen on the idea of being able to develop other planets.

The idea is that colonists are trying to make do with a virgin planet in an early colony. Getting an economy up and running while you're trying to build your infrastructure is tough and requires importing nearly everything. The idea isn't necessarily to make colonies expensive to maintain, but instead to have them produce relatively little until they get up and running. With investment and time, they could effectively become second homeworld. Think about, say, Colonial America, when people knew how to make firearms, explosives, and huge masonry buildings, but were living in log cabins, caves, and sod huts, but then were eventually building stone forts, cannons, and then highways and factories.

As for the above population concern, there IS an ability that does that. Planet Maximum Population, it's called, and it calls the sum of every ability that has it. I do believe this will work, but if it turns out to be too hugely micromanagement I might take it out.

As for balancing, I'm going to work some math to make sure it's at least mostly balanced but, all things considered, perfect balance is almost impossible in something complex. I understand that but I'm going for it anyway because that's the direction I want to take. All things considered, I think having some unbalanced things is advantageous. I want a mod where nobody can really stare at it for hours and completely break it, as everything will also have a counter of some sort. Either way, perfect balance isn't what I'm going for. I'd love for people to just go "Oh that looks neat" and spec their empire in what they want.

As for the ability to construct large ships, that's where the infrastructure comes in. Just because you can think "Hey, let's make a ship the size of a moon" doesn't mean you can afford it. Yes, you'll need to develop yourself some before you can crank out a Worldship, but that's the idea. Making a big metal shell is an easy to thing to think of, it's accomplishing it that's hard. Plus, that gives you the option of building these enormous hulks early or waiting for later and sticking to swarms of small ships.

Even so, I'm shying away from the BIGGER = BETTAR idea that Space Empires games tend to lean toward. I'd rather wars be based on what bonuses you have, what you've researched, and how you fit your ships rather than how big you can make things.

Now there's technology...that's one of my biggest gripes with SEV and that's where I ultimately ended up starting. The idea of funny cross-tech things and passive research greatly appeals to me.

Ultimately, I do understand that this is a massive undertaking but the fact is, I don't have much better to do with my time at the moment.

[Suicide Junkie]

I have some recommendations:
- Small amounts of supply generation for all facilities. (So even backwater planets can spare some food & fuel to an occasional stranded ship, but for serious military you need dedicated facilities)
An organics farm should produce more than a mineral miner, but all quite modest values compared to an actual supply factory.

- Very generous resource storage capacities. 100k-200k per facility, for example. Let an empire have 5 million in storage so they can run a deficit during wartime.
Also, supply and ordnance storage. Its no good when your fleet has 20x the capacity of your supply planet.

[Suicide Junkie]

If the +MaxPop ability is working, you could do something really cool with planets:
50M/500M max pop on all domed/breathable planets.
City facilities provide +500M max.

Then use the production modifiers to make build rates be 1% per 10M people!

If possible, you could restrict cheap open air cities to breathable worlds, and force the nonbreathables to build domes for only +50M people... until they have enough industry to finish more advanced structures like arcologies or orbital habitats (++pop, but tiny footprint) in a reasonable time.

[MrToxin]

Mr. Junkie, those are some fine ideas. Actually, some of them were already planned but others I'm most likely going to use. I did plan on having Farms especially provide supply with miners providing some ordnance (hey, it's amazing what you can do with scrap metal, duct tape, and chewing gum) but then have more developed or specialized things making more. Like, a Military City being able to distribute absurd amounts of stuff to warships in the area, as it provides the infrastructure.

As for the population, I'm going with another "diminishing returns" situation. The thing is, as more and more people occupy a planet, more and more of them spend time running the infrastructure, maintaining the buildings, and making art and such. Less people are actually producing. That being said, you pretty much need the bonuses from a populous planet to build enormous ships quickly enough to be useful. Just another choice for the empire to make....

That open air/domed city idea is actually pretty stellar. I had planned on arcos with the orbital habs idea, but as for domed cities...wow, that's just cool.

Anyway...giving every building storage space goes back to the whole infrastructure idea. My experience has been that pretty much every building ever has storage space. Why not apply that to a game? Allow mines to store minerals to some degree, though not nearly as much as a dedicated storage yard. I always did like the idea of being able to have savings that can be liquidated as the situation requires.

In general, though, supply and ordnance are things I planned on really tinkering with. I do envision things like, say, a home system being able to distribute more supplies around remotely than a fleet could ever possibly use, while things struggle further off, with reserve supplies in the ship being meant for expeditionary forces. That also allows "home guard" style designs that have little storage but aren't likely to run out because they never do leave home.

So...got anything else for me?