Races

[Central_Speaker_Dan]

I'm not sure I agree with your numbers there.

I know they aren't right but it was late and I was on my way to bed. I have the actual article stating the value here somewhere in my room but as it is immaterial I haven't been bothered to find it.
I think it said that a particular species of fly (I can't remember exactly which one) could survive a dose of up to and not including 10 million siverts (10,000,000Sv).

You want to be looking as possible non-terrestrial environments, and quite a lot of those have lower background radiation levels than Earth.

You are absolutely right that the Earth has a relatively thin atmosphere and that we sit on the inner half of our sun's goldilocks zone. In that sense the Earth has a relatively high amount of celestial radiation but have you thought about the radiation that the planet itself will generate?
The interactions between the layers of a Gas Giant, its rings and its moons are bound to create massive electromagnetic distortions and possibly generate a lot of radiation.
Never-the-less you are correct to say that there will be organisms with far lower and for that matter far higher radiation resistances.

Radiation resistance... This must cost something to raise else everyone will instantly go for high.

I was contemplating a way to make radiation resistance an automated system that the player has no direct control over and I realised that it all depends on how radiation levels are generated for planets.
I would think it something like this:
-The thicker the atmosphere the less radiation.
-The further from the star/stars the less radiation (Inverse square law).
-The less radioactive resource produced the less radiation.

As such the radiation resistance of a race could be set up to follow the same rules.
-Atmosphere type has an effect. No atmosphere has highest radiation resistance, really dense atmosphere (this is were air pressure comes in at least as a background, non active, calculation aid) has a really low radiation level.
-Racial types have different effects. Say a Humanoid has a moderate and an Insectoid a high resistance.
-Home Planet type has an effect. A gas Giant has less radiation that a terrestrial.

These are all determined during race creation but a second set of influencing factors could be added so that the same race has a different resistance every game.
-Distance of home-world from star. The further the lower the resistance.
-Radioactive resource output of planet. The higher the output the higher the races radiation resistance.
-Number of stars. If you start in a system with three stars the radiation output will be aprox 3 times greater so your resistance will be aprox 3 times greater.

What do you both think?
Dan.

[MattII]

What I'd like to see is certain cultural attributes that can be changed during the game itself, such as how good you are at research compared to how good you are at construction compared to how militaristic your culture is, etc.

[Central_Speaker_Dan]

How do you mean?

Am I right in thinking that you are leaning towards something like a 'budget slider' so that you can control how much of your empires resources are spent on these things?
That way if I needed to build ships quickly I could increase the construction budget or if I needed a new tech fast then I could increase the research budget.

Does that sound like a usable system?
Dan.

[MattII]

Originally Posted by Central_Speaker_Dan

Am I right in thinking that you are leaning towards something like a 'budget slider' so that you can control how much of your empires resources are spent on these things?
That way if I needed to build ships quickly I could increase the construction budget or if I needed a new tech fast then I could increase the research budget.

No, what I was meaning would be like the Characteristics screen in the SE4 Empire Setup section, only with the categories being Racial (covering what is now Environmental Resistance, Reproduction and Happiness) and Cultural (pretty much everything else in the screen). Racial characteristics would be fixed at the start of the game, but Cultural characteristics would be modifiable during the game, though the changes would take time to take effect (like say 1 point per turn per characteristic).

[Central_Speaker_Dan]

That makes sense Matt.

It would be nice to see a game that allowed for the gradual evolution of cultures.
I am wondering though how exactly it could work.

Please explain further,
Dan.

[MattII]

Well the per-turn change would be small, but I couldn't give you an exact figure, because the number of ways you could change the characteristics could possibly be pretty huge, I suspect you'd have to standardise the costs first (Aggressiveness, Defensiveness and maintenance all cost 50 points/level in SE4, as compared to 25 points/level for the others).

Oh, and just a minor bit of flavouring, I'd like to see you able you get to set the 'age' of your race both in years (the years number you see at the top of the screen at the start of the game), and in months (how many turns it takes to pass a year, anything over 10 would have nonsense symbols, or highly stylised letters).

[Central_Speaker_Dan]

anything over 10 would have nonsense symbols, or highly stylised letters

You could make it far easier by using a non-decimal date system.
Something like this would do very nicely:
Year:Month

That way you could have the year 2908 and the 13th month:
2908:13

Anyway. As we seem to be the only ones on this thread and the developers have made no sign that they are listening none of this will ever be included.

Hope they let us know if they are there,
Dan.