Primitives for proportions?

[Loser]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
...they should get a small amount of rads, it would make more sense to have rad-free, giftable "basic" techs available to space-faring races. ... you could have a set of "rocket engines" and so on that are available to normal races, but aren't particularly useful (because they are slow, inefficient) except as gifts to primitives. They would be perfect for primitives, who can maintain them easily because they don't use rads. Also, it means the primitives could maintain it but not repair it- or at least, they wouldn't be able to repair the engines, although they could probably fix the crew quarters or bridge if necesasary.

This idea I like, but there is something I do not understand: I thought both maintainance and repair costs were determined by the original cost of the component. If this is true, than anything the Primative can maintain, he can also repair. Anything he cannot repair, he cannot maintain.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Of course you could just gift 100000 rads along with the ship...

This solution of yours, I think, is the better solution.

"I have something for the glorious nation of little-bear-people. Here is a ship, it comes with instructions for how to run it."

"Yub yub!"

"Here are some appropriately packaged radioactive elements, you will need these to run this ship."

"Det luktar flingor har."

"No, do not open the package. Do not use the contents of the package as condiments. Do not use these resources in any way other than as you are directed by the instructions. Hey you! Put that down!"

Originally posted by dogscoff:
I'm not sure about superior infantry, but they probably ought to be about equivalent. It's worth remembering that they will be completely unable to build anything other than infantry for the first X turns (until they get uplifted)... (Build infantry, build more infantry, yubyub)

You are absolutely right here. No real need to buff the Primitive Infantry, as there will be more than enough of it.

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Also, although it's easy to destroy them, they would pose so little threat that most (human) players just wouldn't bother. Maybe put plague prevention 2 on their cultural centres, and allow them to upgrade to 3 or 4 after uplift. The only trouble with this is that human players would find a way to exploit this "free" plague-prevention tech.
Finally, since half the racial point selections are irrelevant to them, they would all probably have very high reproduction and happiness traits, which (I think) would go some way to countering the effect of plagues.

I think there are many reasons to plague them. They have a homeworld full of facilities. Once the population is wiped out there is no militia to deal with, making an invasion that much simpler. And even if you can only fit 400,000,000 of your own people on their world; it will keep its full complement of facilities. Even if they're junky facilities, it is well worth the trouble, in almost any circumstance. After all, another player can pull your friends away from you behind your back, but to take a planet form you, he will need to deal with your face... or something.

To resolve this, I think it would be appropriate to either make them invulnerable to all plagues, or to give them, as you recommended, level 2 or so in plague resistance and make plagues harder to research. No a whole lot harder, but some. As powerful as it is, plague is pretty easy to get a hold of in a normal game, I do not know how it is in Proportions.

Additionally, the anti-plague tech can be made Primitive only, then players could not get it.

You are very right about it being more realistic to leave the Primitives vulnerable to plague: see Battlefield Earth (or rather don't see it, it was poor, and don't read the book either, it's just a Parable of Scientology so just forget about it).

Or you could just leave them vulnerable to plagues and see how unbalancing it makes the game to leave this simple exploit open to players. I think leaving Primitives in such a manner would eliminate from them any possibility of adding something to the game, but I do not know.

Originally posted by dogscoff:
*some stuff about Dirt, Steam, and Space races*

The way I see it, Dirt Races would produce almost no resources; maybe just the slim Mineral and Organic they need to make infantry, and almost nothing more. If you want to give a Dirt Race a ship, you will need to give them enough resources to keep it running for a while, that's a whole lot of all three resources.

I'm assuming these are not Neutral Races, only because I find great amusement in letting the little buggers out of their starting system. Dirt Race combat AI would center around loading up infantry in any ship you give them, heading for the nearest inhabited planet, and invading.

"Oh great, the Ewoks just turned on me."

"What? How bad can that be? They're just Ewoks."

"I gave them a couple of transport ship with WPs. Those transport ship had shields."

"So."

"I take it you've never faced invasion by thousands of teddy bears with guns... I never should have Uplifted them."

Dirt races get no ability to research, and have no tech tree to climb. They are completely dependant on benevolent Uplift

Out off all the things usful to a player, Dirt Races would probably only get Resupply upgrade to one of their facilities.

Steam Races would have Infantry units highly superior to those made by Dirt Races. They would have the ability to produce large amounts of Minerals, Organics, and maybe a little bit of Radioactives. This would mostly be useful only for trade, unlike Dirt Races who aren't much good for even that, but they will be building things.

Steam Races should have the ability to Research a little bit. Just enough to slowly move up their own tree. Mostly the results would be seen in Infantry and Armor, with a few upgrades to their facilities available. In the long run, Steam Races will have capabilities much like those humans currently have, with petty WPs that fire sad little missiles and perhaps the capacity to mine their own sector. They might, topping out their tree, even be able to build a few extraordinarily expensive fighters. But they never get a shipyard, or drones.

Steam Races will be easier to Uplift than Dirt Races. Then they can get upgrades that add the Repair ability at one of their facilities, among other things.

Space Races will have Infantry, Armor, and rather pitiful fighters at, or very near, their beginning. They can produce Radioactive resources, but not as well as a Real race. They will start with the petty WPs and sad little missiles that Steam Races end up with, and can get better, maybe even some ineffective Direct-Fire weapons.

As Space Races advance, they will gain the ability to produce better, cheaper fighters, better weapons, and maybe even a tiny little space station. They may get drones. At their top, Space Races will get Escorts, Colony ships (yes, they _can_ expand) and, if they're lucky, mine layers.

Both races that are capable of research can get better Versions of their own techs through Uplift. And, based off Uplifted techs, can research even better Versions. Perhaps that would be where Steam Races get Fighters and Space Races get Colony ships (let them start with Colonizing components, just don't give them a ship large enough to fit it).

It should be a trade off, probably for something the Real Race really wants the Steam or Space Race to have. Something like: you Uplift them the Resupply Depot upgrade they will, from that tech, research all kinds of things.

That's how I see it, anyway.

Originally posted by dogscoff:

quote:

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You can mod neutrals.

Excellent (rubs hands together, in a Mr Burns style)

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Yeah, but why? The only difference to Neutrals is they all use the same file set, and they cannot leave their system. Neutrals, as I understand it, are not extra players. Even with Neutrals you cannot go over 20 players.

Originally posted by dogscoff:
What it will probably do is ... fill the transport with ewok warriors and catapults and go invade someone.

That, at least, would be the plan. Go 'Woks!

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Just make it less effective or more costly than the real thing, then real players will have no reason to use it.

Cost is such a funny issue with Intel, is some ways it actually makes it better. I think it would actually be better for Primitive Intel to cost less.

But, as you said, the layered approach works too.

If no one else bites, one of us may have to take up modding, Dogscoff. This sounds way to amusing.

[Phoenix-D]

"This idea I like, but there is something I do not understand: I thought both maintainance and repair costs were determined by the original cost of the component. If this is true, than anything the Primative can maintain, he can also repair. Anything he cannot repair, he cannot maintain."

Repair is free- but if you can't build the component, you can't fix it either.

EDIT: and maintance is just a flat percentage applied to the cost of the ship, total. Doesn't matter if you could build it or not.

[ April 24, 2003, 17:21: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

[geoschmo]

Cost is not a factor in repair. The only question in whether they can repair it is do they have the required technology?

[QuarianRex]

This is a sweet idea. Some thoughts though.

If including the 3 levels of primative (dirt, steam, and space) why not give them all essentially the same tech tree, just starting at different points along it. Artificially capping their tech seems kind of rude. With the proper instruction and training (a.k.a. Trade and Research agreement) even feudal societies (or lower) should be capable of being turned into productive vassal worlds. It should only be a matter of time.

To reflect this just create one tech tree with a nice progression from peasant farms to cities and such, and have each type of primitive start at a dfferent point on the tree. For example, the dirtboys tree would start at 1, the steamers would start at the equivalent of 5, and the spacelads at, say, 10. Each individual tech would start at level 1 but that level would include the appropriate advancements of the full tree up till then.

Hard to teach ewoks how to build an escort? Of course! They start at level 1 and the primatives don't get access to that until level 15 (or whatver) and level 15 is mighty expensive when all you can do is leech off of the knowledge of your betters. It's harder to train cavemen, but not impossible.

As far as giving them "upgrades" such as encanced infantry or plague resistance, I say thee nay! These guys are there for flavour, not a challenge. I don't care how many times a tribesman has to kill his own supper, he won't do squat against a hail of laser-fire. Innate plague resistance? There was a reason why our ancestors had a life expectancy of 35 years. If you want to throw it in then perhaps have level 1 plague res. at the beginning of steam (gotta love penecilin) and level 2 at the begining of space with an extra level or two put higher up in the tree.

Does anyone know if you can trade same-name techs with different racial requirements? Does the game consider them to be two different techs or the same for trading purposes?

[PvK]

This is a great idea, and there are lots of good sub-ideas here. I had fiddled with similar ideas, but as Dogscoff says, I probably won't ever get time to do them myself.

I would suggest making the "normal tech" tech area actually cost a pretty high number of points (whatever it's actually worth) and then adding a disadvantage everyone can take to give them enough points to buy it. This is what I did in Foundations, and it makes it possible to add other types of races (swarm, extradimensionals, pirate, monster, whatever) as well, and keep creation point balance. I called the normal tech "Industrial Construction" in Foundations, although I wasn't entirely happy with the term.

QuarianRex, the game does know the difference between components with the same name.

For Intel of primitives, perhaps give their facilities a small level of Intel, and then give them a fairly good racial-tech defense mission, and little or no offensive intel missions.

PvK

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by QuarianRex:
If including the 3 levels of primative (dirt, steam, and space) why not give them all essentially the same tech tree, just starting at different points along it.

If I understand what you are saying, this would be awesome, but quite impossible to do currently in any sort of mod. It would require hard code changes. Everybody starts at the same tech level in SE4. Unless you are setting up a scenario there is no way around that, other then seperate racial tech areas.

Geoschmo

[Lord Kodos]

LR mod has primitives! Seriously it was one of the earlies planned features.

Speaking of...

I realy an EXTREMELY early early early alpha soon. All my work was lost in yet ANOTHER catastrophic PC crash,ive started anew, with a little help from some backups.

Actually things are going quite nicely.

But anyway back to topic, yeah, this would be VERY cool, and if anyone decides to get to work on this i wouldent mind lending a hand or two.

Later.

[QuarianRex]

Originally posted by PvK:
QuarianRex, the game does know the difference between components with the same name.

I wasn't specific enough. I meant tech areas. If you had two racial techs (say for normals and primatives) with the same name for both (say ship construction) could you trade those racial techs? Does the game tech areas with the same name but different origins to be the same tech area?

Originally posted by geoschmo:
If I understand what you are saying, this would be awesome, but quite impossible to do currently in any sort of mod. It would require hard code changes. Everybody starts at the same tech level in SE4. Unless you are setting up a scenario there is no way around that, other then seperate racial tech areas.

No, I'm talking about three different tech areas, one for each type of primative (dirt, steam, and space). What I meant is for them all to follow a recognizably similar progression. So at Dirt 5 (or whatever) you would have access to the same techs as Steam 1. At Dirt 10 you would have the same tech as Steam 6, which would be the same as Space 1, etc.

No hardcode changes needed, just a recognizable progression of technological advancement. This way space civs will be able to benefit the most from initial research (as they should) while cave dwellers can also reach such heights if given enormous amounts of help (research alliances) and copious time.

This way all races at least have the potential to reach the stars if not the ability.

[Aloofi]

That's an awesome idea!

I would like not just completely primitive civilizations, but also races like Earth today, with the capability of researching missile technology, and DUC, but maybe not the other guns, and with no spaceships, but with "orbital fighters" to defend the planet, weapons platforms, satellites and bases, and maybe drones... .
What about an Neutral AI that only builds units and bases?
That would make for a really tough homeworld in Proportions. I can easily see a Primitive homeworld with 300 WP, a 100 sats and a minefield of 100 large mines...., and maybe 40 000 000 infantry......

[Aloofi]

Think about it, we could roleplay a contact, TODAY, of Earth with an space filled of power hungry alien races.....

What if the Krill Dominion lives 2 systems away from us........