Colony ships, for sale cheap! - Page 6

geoschmo · #51 March 15th, 2002, 10:35 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
I wonder what that does in a infinite resources game?

Phoenix-D

Well, I haven't tested that, but I would guess the same thing standard resource facilities do in a infinite resource game. It would subtract the resources from the empire total, but not change the planet's value.

And the amount of resources subtracted would be factored by the value of the planet. That part is a little wierd, but I'm not sure how you would get around it. Basically a research facility would cost less to operate on a mineral poor planet than on a mineral rich one. Kind of the opposite of what you would think really. Something to keep in mind, but the effect should be small I would think.

Geoschmo

geoschmo · #52 March 15th, 2002, 10:39 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Rlaney:
On the cultural centers I just changed the big one. I wanted to set it so that it can't be built but just exists on the homeworld. May have to make it associated with a tech that is unattainable. What file controls what buildings are on the homeworld at the start anyway?

The only way to do that I think would be have a different set of data files for the game startup and then change to play the game. If the tech is unatainable, then noone will ahve it by default and wont be able to have one on theri homeworld, I believe.

No file controls the starting facs. It's hardcoded. But you can play around with it by changin the abilities of the various facilities so the game chosses them.

Geoschmo

Rlaney · #53 March 15th, 2002, 11:07 PM

Yeah, for finite resources I may have to tone down cultural centers a bit. My purpose for trying to add maintenance to research and intel is to prevent larger empires from overwhleming smaller ones with sheer research ability. Kind of make a smaller empire a more viable option in the game. There is a restrictions line in the facilities.txt but it is supposedly not used. That must be hardcoded too.

PvK · #54 March 16th, 2002, 02:01 AM

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
...

No file controls the starting facs. It's hardcoded. But you can play around with it by changin the abilities of the various facilities so the game chosses them.

Geoschmo

I thought it was controlled by the AI planet building file, under the Homeworld entry - I was pretty sure that determined it.

As for preventing building cultural centers on colonies, I don't see why you'd want to, since they are about the same as colony cultural centers, and both of them are so costly that it's nearly impossible to actually build them, anway.

PvK

Rlaney · #55 March 16th, 2002, 02:18 AM

My only reason for taking them out was that I toned down the regular ones a little to keep them from strip-mining a planet immediately and I wanted to make the main ones kind of like a palace or Empire Capital bonus. I love your mod but I'm tryin to adjust it to my preferred playing style(finite resources). I have no intention of posting it as a mod, but if I did I would certainly get your permission first(and certainly give you credit) since I'm just making adjustments to all your hard work. Thanks for all your hard work btw.

geoschmo · #56 March 16th, 2002, 02:34 AM

quote:
Originally posted by PvK:

I thought it was controlled by the AI planet building file, under the Homeworld entry - I was pretty sure that determined it.

Ok, well correct, sort of. The AI_Construction_Facilities does have entries for homeworlds. However it's not looking for specific facilitiy names, but abilities. So I suppose you could play with that to a point and get a different makeup on the homeworlds. I haven't tried it myself. I thought I remembered someone saying they did and it had no effect. But I could be remembering that wrong. Either way I guess it depends on what the goal is.

Also the game does have some hardcode overides I know about for sure. For example in a high tech start it won't build research fac's, even thoguh they are listed in the file.

Geoschmo

PvK · #57 March 16th, 2002, 04:08 AM

Rlaney, don't worry - I'm happy you're enjoying Proportions and are trying new things out! It would be cool if you could get it to work ok with limited resources - I just assumed it wouldn't work.

It sounds to me like you could use the resource improvement abilities to compensate for the drain on homeworlds. I guess ideally, you would want to make the drain just slightly higher than the replenishment, but it will be hard to balance, I think, also if an empire takes advanced storage techniques or reduced planet exploitation, it will throw off your balancing.

I had intended to include resource depletion in the larger Version of the mod (Foundations), by using negative resource improvement abilities while playing an "infinite resources" game. That would give a much more realistic pace to resource depletion than the "finite resources" mechanic, and it wouldn't throw away the extraction rate modifiers the way that "finite resources" does. The only problem is that, at least when I tested it back around 1.57 or so, setting negative values on resource improvement had no effect. I explained this in a report to MM, but I haven't bothered to test to see if he actually made a change - there is no note in the history.txt file about a change, but not all changes appear there. I'd be obliged if you'd like to give it a test. Make a facility with resource improvement at -50 or so and then sit it on a planet for over a year, and see if the resource levels go down at all. If it does... it'll be really cool.

PvK

Rlaney · #58 March 16th, 2002, 04:46 AM

In finite it takes resource from your pool and puts them back into the planet instead of just taking them away. I fixed the cultural thing sort of... I got rid of them. Mostly they duplicated bonuses on the cities. I made the cities about as powerful as equivalent level facilities, i.e. resource I intel I storage I...also I changed the resourece to solar generation and set it pretty high for the cities. One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage. I worked around this by adding shields to all facilities. 250 for level I, 500 level II, 750 level III...with some exceptions. Resupply depots are 1000. Yards are 1000, 2000, and 3000 and cities are the same. This means it takes a big fleet to glass a planet and shields go up as infrastructure increases. Now if you can make an AI that will use troops and try to invade planets instead of just throwing ships at them it'll be pretty close to perfect. I tested 10 high tech escorts against a home planet and they couldn't take the shields down with wave motion guns... But this was a homeworld with 8 cities I think so that kind of balances. Remains to be seen how difficult conquering a less developed colony world will be.

I like the propulsion/mass relation. If only we could set ships with no supplies to move every other turn or even every 3rd it would make supplies an important part of the game.

To try and balance the higher cost of colony ship I had to set the solar gen on cities pretty high so it's hard in the begining to field more than maybe 3 escorts and 1 colony ship but that prevents massive expansion in the early game and makes building up a good planet more important

[ 16 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]

PvK · #59 March 16th, 2002, 04:58 AM

I like your suggestion to add "shield" values to facilities, although I don't think it should be impossible to bLast planets with the right weapons. However I don't understand what you mean by:

"One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage."

What do you mean?

The AI will use troops, sometimes.

quote:
If only we could set ships with no supplies to move every other turn or even every 3rd it would make supplies an important part of the game.

I find that supplies are very important in Proportions. A ship with ion engines mark I and no extra supply storage only has a one-way range of 19 sectors! In 1.5 the situation is even more interesting, with some of the suggestions from Dogscoff and others worked in, so that there are two grades of all marks of engines with different output and efficiency - with capital ships you have to trade off range against speed, and the difference in speed between small and large ships is greater.

PvK

Rlaney · #60 March 16th, 2002, 05:15 AM

quote:
Originally posted by PvK:
I like your suggestion to add "shield" values to facilities, although I don't think it should be impossible to bLast planets with the right weapons. However I don't understand what you mean by:

Not impossible, just difficult. I made all planetary weapons (bombs) skip shields. I could tone it down more but I hate the AI just coming in and glassing planet with no attempt at conquest.

"One other thing I found it the "damage to kill one pop" in settings. You had it set to 1000. all That does is make all weapons do minimum 1000 damage."

What do you mean?

damage to kill 1 pop= 100

escort, 1 depleeted uranium cannon= 100 damage against unshielded planet. Oddly enough the anti-planet drone warheads seem to work correctly.

I find that supplies are very important in Proportions. A ship with ion engines mark I and no extra supply storage only has a one-way range of 19 sectors! In 1.5 the situation is even more interesting, with some of the suggestions from Dogscoff and others worked in, so that there are two grades of all marks of engines with different output and efficiency - with capital ships you have to trade off range against speed, and the difference in speed between small and large ships is greater.

Oh it works great at higher tech but low tech-low thrust engines give at least one move supplied or not.

PvK