Proportions mod: So confusing!

[PvK]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:

"18 of them? Well at 100 years a piece, that's only 1800 years. It took Earth more than twice that long to produce substantially fewer than that."

Not really. We've gone from pure agricultural to our modern infrastructure in about 200 years.

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If all you care about is the infrastructure, sure. Of course, on the homeworld, there is the advantage that it is the correct atmosphere (composition, pressure, and weather), radiation levels, bioshpere, gravity, and temperature. Overcoming these is part of the massive challenge of creating a productive colony on an alien planet.

A Proportions Cultural center represents more than simply industry and infrastructure, however. It represents the culture, society, history, art, drama, economy, as well as the environment that makes it possible to run and sustain large-scale production, reasearch, and so on so that the planet actually contributes to an empire rather than sucking massive resources just to keep it in existence.

In particular, one of the reasons homeworld research centers are so highly rated compared to colony ones, is because I reject the SE4 premise that research is an additive and transitive phenomenon. Two labs do not research subject A twice as fast as one, and chemistry lab C cannot be switched to researching Applied Intelligence on a moment's notice, nor will it stop researching chemistry because Emperor Juvenile III insists that Political Puppets must be obtained ASAP. So, having cultural centers that cannot be replaced and multiplied during a typical game session, provides a base level of research ability that all empires have, and which will not be warped out of proportion simply by colonizing a hundred alien worlds and mass-producing labs, which is both unrealistic (IMO) and unbalancing.

The ability in itself to multiply your empire's abilities in a few years' time by colonizing alien worlds and turning them into homeworld clones is exactly what Proportions' design premise rejects. Actually attempting such in reality would, it seems to me, lead to complete bankruptcy, so Proportions is actually still quite generous in this from a realism standpoint, in that it can actually still be very worthwhile to do so. It's just not like the standard game, where it's so easy to clone your homeworld that the balance of power hinges on the ability to colonize as fast as possible.

With the change I requested to max homeworld planet value settings in 1.78, however, I might be able to re-do the way some of this works for Proportions 3.0, however. It would probably make sense that homeworlds should have an intrinsically higher value than any alien world, due to the natural habitat.

An advanced space-faring society shouldn't need large populations to create great amounts of resources anyways, as those kinds of things can be automated.

True. That's one reason I made the Proportions population effects curve level out pretty drastically after the first 30 million or so.

PvK

[ September 16, 2002, 04:37: Message edited by: PvK ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:
The idea with proportions is that since everything goes slower, you just generate turns more often. I can easily run through 100 turns before I really get anywhere in the game. This is probably a problem when playing against other players, though, as 100 turns will likely take 100 days.

Yep!

BTW a fan (sorry, I forget which one - Dogscoff? Rollo?) made a utility which auto-runs turns. You could probably get a jump start into a developed game position in Proportions by using this to get to turn 100, or 500, or ... one of the neat things about Proportions (IMO) is that it should extend the interesting play time to several hundred turns (or more) because of the delayed research and development. Especially on High research costs, but even Low or Medium are pretty gradual.

PvK

[Mylon]

Yes, I appreciate the idea of not being able to make homeworld clones easily, but I would like to see making such clones actually possible to some degree. The value improvement plants are in themselves terraforming facilities that adjust gravity, temperature, some air conditions, ect. (and there have been plenty of times when my homeworld has been generated with "unpleasant" conditions).

Still, 500 turns for a race that specializes in fast building (hardy industrialist + 20% space yard rate) is a tad much. 50 turns (5 years!) may seem too short for the description, but that is plenty long building time for one facility and I really doubt that anyone could realistically build more than 3 on any particular planet. And this also makes upgrading them actually possible, if we ever get the ability to upgrade one facility at a time and more levels are added.

[Mylon]

Originally posted by PvK:
You're right - SE4 just doesn't handle complex upgrades. It's really only designed for upgrading to something of about the same cost, like in the standard game.

Your idea is a good one, although I don't know if SE4 would allow upgrades both ways (city->metropolis and city_1->city_2).

PvK

Well part if the idea is that you would remove the upgrades between cities totally and adjust the costs somewhat (Metropolises would take forever to build if they were actually 100kT! Technically they're only 65 if you build a minor city first, and you get some amount of production for some of the building time), though you _could_ design the cities in a heirarchy of minor city level 1 > minor city level 2 > minor city level 3 > metropolis level 1, ect, but I don't think it's worth the bother. Especially not since there won't be any way to upgrade to minor city level 3 if you have "cities" uncovered.

From my experience, it seems that metropolises are the most useful infrastructure simply because they're really the only facility that produces a decent amount for the investment. The cities between minor and metropolis merely add build time to getting to metropolis, thus lowering their value.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by PvK:
Hmm. I wonder if it is possible to fool SE4's "one construction fac per planet" limit by upgrading from a fac without a SY to one that has one... that could be an interesting effect.
PvK

That's exactly how Suicide Junkie created his "spaceyard enhancers" (or something like that) in P&N... there's a thread about it around here somewhere, including a sample addition to facilities.txt...

[nitey]

Oleg,

>> That of course create error Messages. If you get latest Version, try to load one of my races (pequeninos, soul hunters or nostropholo). If you still have a problem, let know. <<

Your races work fine. It's just all the standard races apparently need to be recreated and saved. BTW, I'm using the latest Version 2.4.2 of proportions.

Pvk,

Thanks for your replies. I suspect that the problem is exactly what you mentioned, since the EEE and ABBIDON start on Gas Giants, they probably end up with more starting facilities compared to everyone else thus more research, etc. points. I'm not totally sure I'll mess with the colony ships, as I want to give your method a bit more time to grow on me, but I sure appreciate you telling me how I can go and adjust it if I want.

Thanks!

[oleg]

Gas Giant races have bigger homeworlds only if you use "poor homeworld value" - rock/ice start on small while gas still have medium. Normal or good homeworld start gives equal homeworlds to all races.