Proportions mod: So confusing!

[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.

[Graeme Dice]

If all you care about is the infrastructure, sure.

That's all that matters for producing materials and constructing ships. Such things would require next to no manpower for an advanced civilization like those in SE4.

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.

All of which are mostly irrelevant to automated processors, which already exist on ships, and are far more effective than a facility that covers half a continent.

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.

A planet only requires large amounts of resources from another planet if it cannot produce enough food to feed the population. We're talking about completely untouched planets, with material resources similar to Earth. There's no real reason to send anything to the planet past the initial colony set up materials unless the planet is extremely poor.

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.

If creating colonies that increase production by an order of magnitude bankrupts the empire, then Britain would have been bankrupted a hundred times over by now. Colonies represent untapped resources, and beyond a very short setup period would easily produce more than they take at the tech levels reached in SE4.

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.

Only for things that actually require population, like research, and creating more population.

[Sinapus]

Originally posted by nitey:
Pvk,

Another thing I've noticed. I've been trying to start a new game and if I select an Existing Race template, I get a error (unable to open file). I can create a new race emp file without a problem.

I think someone mentioned there is an empires folder in Proportions for mod-specific empires. Another thing you can do is put a 'savegame' folder in there and the game will use that when you are saving games. Neat way to keep different game's saves separate.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by PvK:
BTW a fan (sorry, I forget which one - Dogscoff? Rollo?) made a utility which auto-runs turns.

I am fairly certain that was made by Master Belisarius.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Sinapus:
...Another thing you can do is put a 'savegame' folder in there and the game will use that when you are saving games. Neat way to keep different game's saves separate.

Ah! I didn't know that. Good suggestion, thanks!

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by DirectorTsaarx:

quote:

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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...

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Very good to know. I'll have to give that some thought.

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by 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.

Ya, I suppose they could be a little easier - at least the colony Versions.

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).

_Value_ improvement doesn't necessarily have anything to do with gravity (if it did, it should require gravitational technology) or atmosphere.

And yes, it's too bad that SE4 makes planetary conditions all on the same random distribution, and with such limited effects. Judging from the one observable solar system we have in real life, we'd have to have a lot more smog before Earth will be less hospitable than any of the other planets...

... still, as with so many things in the game, conditions don't have to be taken literally, or on parity between different types of planets. For instance, an unpleasant homeworld could mean that there is room for artificial improvement, whereas an unpleasant colony world could mean below-average from the standpoint of an alien world. That's what I assumed in thinking of Proportions mod: the reason it is so hard to build things on an alien world is largely because it's going to be extremely inhospitable, just because it will be such different conditions from any your race was used to.

Still, 500 turns for a race that specializes in fast building (hardy industrialist + 20% space yard rate) is a tad much..

500 turns or 500 years? I have an H.I. race in a current game, and on a planet with 7 million colonists and NO space yard, it will build a CC in 400 years. On one with 60 million people and NO space yard, 260 years. On one with 30 million and a level I space yard, 184.7 years. If you've got a colony that can build a cultural center in only 500 turns (50 years), then maybe I should increase the time required.

Because, as I've said recently on this thread before, a cultural center represents a whole civilization, and mass-producing McDonalds and Wall Mart (and strip mines and industry) doesn't count. All that does is add industry (and blandness) to an existing civilization.

No civilization can be created in 50 years. Cities and industry, maybe. Civilizations, no.

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.

A cultural center is not just "a facility".

PvK