Proportions mod Version 2.2 released

[oleg]

PvK, drones need some balancing.

As it is now, large drone is completely and utterly useless ! With max. speed 7 it can not catch up with same tech level cruiser !!!

Why not make 2,3 and 4 engines for small, medium and large drones ? They will have the same speed.
In normal SE IV, drones are fastest space ships and I do not see any reason why it should be different in Proportions. If you think it is way too much, add at least one engine to large drone. Right now I can see no reasons whatsoever to build even medium drones.

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Regarding to research, I think the best way is to add one or two levels to research facilities. And may be increas a little the output of RC-2 and RC-3. But not too much of course, or it will spoil the whole idea of Proportions mod.

[PDF]

PvK,
In fact I have two issues :
* While slow progress is perhaps more realistic it is also just plain boring ... 100 turns ahead research progress some 20%, while research costs rise fourfold, so tech goes slower and slower. I just NEED something to go faster
* But the main point is "facility space usage" in Proportions. My colonies often have only 5 to 10 spaces, my HW are full of CC since start, so what can I do ? I just cannot specialize any planet in anything : either I put "general purpose" settlements/cities etc that produce a little of everything, and the specialized ones are pure crap, even 10 of them doesn't produce much !

Additionnaly the facilities limit comes weird : I can put only 5 small research labs, but (supposing I can produce them) 5 Col CC on the same world will take the same space !

So I really think that bigger specialized facilities, for colonies as well as HW. These should be on an "upgradable" path to the smaller ones to speed up the process (and let AI handle them).
/rant

One idea :I'm thinking of using "multiplier" facilities for "cultural" simulation (CCs): what about some expensive facilities that would set production, research or Intel to 200-500% instead of producing a (big) flat resource output ? That would give a comparable result (HW will produce much more than colonies for long) but be simpler to handle for AI (no need of bogus abilitie !), and closer to original SEIV design as well.

[oleg]

PvK, another problem with drones:

Drone launcher cargo capacity is broken.
It is completely wrong to have 3(!!!) drone launchers to accomodate 1 drone.

Even if you think that default drone launchers
are most efficient cargo bays in the game, take into account its research cost:
DL-1 cost 10K and only marginaly better than CB-2 (6K). Yes, DL-3 is the best cargo bay available, but it is rather late discovery.
May be it is nesseccary to increase DL size to 40K, but please restore capacity to 100,140 and 180 for small, medium and large DL.

Right now (take into account the broken speed of drones) Proportions is completely drone free

[Tenryu]

POOR PVK!
NEVER-THE-Less, Nice work!

[jimbob]

PVK: Don't ya just hate it when people drone on and on and on..?

(Oleg: I'm totally joking... )

[PvK]

Originally posted by Tenryu:
PVK,
You could ask MM to add an EVENT Type or Types such as: "Research - Complete project" or "Research - Add Points" or "Research - Multiply(labs) by n" ,then scatter a few of these around the Events file with different values. That might well simulate sudden unexpected breakthroughs and such.

You can ask them - malfador@malfador.com - although I agree this would be a neat thing to add, and it has been mentioned before in the context of the "derelict" picture in the events folder, I don't think I'd put it very high up the list of other suggestions in terms of ease of implementation for MM and urgency compared to other features.

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by PDF:
PvK,
In fact I have two issues :
* While slow progress is perhaps more realistic it is also just plain boring ... 100 turns ahead research progress some 20%, while research costs rise fourfold, so tech goes slower and slower. I just NEED something to go faster

I feel your pain. But seriously, I know what you mean. Use Low research cost, and/or mod the research facility abilities. I think I will add some more facs though.

* But the main point is "facility space usage" in Proportions. My colonies often have only 5 to 10 spaces, my HW are full of CC since start, so what can I do ? I just cannot specialize any planet in anything : either I put "general purpose" settlements/cities etc that produce a little of everything, and the specialized ones are pure crap, even 10 of them doesn't produce much !

Well, the specialized ones don't produce much compared to entire freaking continental space age civilizations, not surprisingly, to me anyway. I would submit that the proportion there is about right, give or take. However compared to the standard game, the total amount of production for a mid-to-late game empire is a lot smaller. That, though, can be changed by editing settings.txt planet values, and you can change the relative values of homeworlds compared to colony worlds there too. Malfador means to change the 250% limit on homeworld values, too.

I am thinking though that the production facilities should probably all be jacked up so that building a facility provides more that you can do with it. I would increase the cultural center amounts by essentially the same factor, though.

Additionnaly the facilities limit comes weird : I can put only 5 small research labs, but (supposing I can produce them) 5 Col CC on the same world will take the same space !

Well the SE4 model of facility space isn't something I can change. However notice that a cultural facility is generally the equivalent of several ordinary facilities at once - it's not that it "takes the same space" - it's that space is NOT the limiting factor. Planetary development, and the limits of what can be done with just building labs on a planet without any infrastructure, are the limiting factors. Don't take the facility "space" literally.

So I really think that bigger specialized facilities, for colonies as well as HW. These should be on an "upgradable" path to the smaller ones to speed up the process (and let AI handle them).
/rant

Ya, I'll look into adding something like that.

One idea :I'm thinking of using "multiplier" facilities for "cultural" simulation (CCs): what about some expensive facilities that would set production, research or Intel to 200-500% instead of producing a (big) flat resource output ? That would give a comparable result (HW will produce much more than colonies for long) but be simpler to handle for AI (no need of bogus abilitie !), and closer to original SEIV design as well.

Yes I've been thinking of trying this again too, but it will take some thought and work to do right. I believe that only the highest planetary production multiplier applies, so it becomes a problem trying to do something like this to a meaningful degree without also making all of the high-tech facilities that do this obsolete or pointless.

Of course, what you can do is use a homeworld slot for something that multiplies production of a particular kind.

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by oleg:
PvK, drones need some balancing.

As it is now, large drone is completely and utterly useless ! With max. speed 7 it can not catch up with same tech level cruiser !!!

These are exaggerations. A large drone can inflict 4200 points of damage to ships, or 7000 points of damage to planets, so it's not useless. A speed 7 cruiser is maxed out for speed and will be expensive and either very short-ranged or require space for supply storage (point being, not all cruisers go as fast as they can be designed for). Exaggeration aside, it's a good observation.

Why not make 2,3 and 4 engines for small, medium and large drones ? They will have the same speed.
In normal SE IV, drones are fastest space ships and I do not see any reason why it should be different in Proportions. If you think it is way too much, add at least one engine to large drone. Right now I can see no reasons whatsoever to build even medium drones.

Good suggestion to increase the engines to 2,3,4... I think I had intended to do that originally, but forgot. The thing I don't like about standard drones is they get a "materials" speed increase that makes no sense to me and makes the smaller ones truly obsolete.

So, good suggestion/catch and I will put it in. I disagree though that there is no reason to use larger drones with 2 engines compared to smaller ones. Speed is not everything, and the extra 80kT allows things that are impossible on a small drone, such as dumping Stealth/Scattering armor and ECM on, to make them very hard to shoot down - a slow but very-hard-to-kill drone is better than a fast but easily-shot-down drone, in many cases.

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Regarding to research, I think the best way is to add one or two levels to research facilities. And may be increas a little the output of RC-2 and RC-3. But not too much of course, or it will spoil the whole idea of Proportions mod.

I will look into it.

In my 2000-pt one-planet Low research cost test game, though, I was pretty happy with the AI's progress by turn 120-130. It seemed to still have good techs it could get in a few turns, and had good mid-game type techs (cruisers, fighters, CT engines, shields + regenerators, EW III, CSM V, etc).

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by oleg:
PvK, another problem with drones:

Drone launcher cargo capacity is broken.
It is completely wrong to have 3(!!!) drone launchers to accomodate 1 drone.

Even if you think that default drone launchers
are most efficient cargo bays in the game, take into account its research cost:
DL-1 cost 10K and only marginaly better than CB-2 (6K). Yes, DL-3 is the best cargo bay available, but it is rather late discovery.
May be it is nesseccary to increase DL size to 40K, but please restore capacity to 100,140 and 180 for small, medium and large DL.

Why does a drone launcher have to be able to also store a whole drone? Just add a cargo bay. Well, I guess I can add the equivalent amount of size to provide cargo to carry one drone per launcher - that would make sense, but it won't take into account current cargo tech levels unless I made a whole heap of variants - this may tend to penalize empires that research advanced cargo tech. I guess I could do two types of drone launcher - one that is just the launcher, and one that includes enough space to hold a drone of the corresponding tech level, but is the appropriate size. I don't want to make the drone launcher the best cargo/size ratio component or there will be weenies using them to haul population around, and so on.

Right now (take into account the broken speed of drones) Proportions is completely drone free

Aw come on. Your suggestions are good but you're exaggerating. As I said before, even a slow large drone can be more effective than a faster smaller one. The cargo change to launchers isn't going to make much practical difference because you can already use cargo on drone launchers, and after the change it will probably still be a good idea. And finally, drones can be very decisive in Proportions as is, because they have no maintenance cost, and maintenance is much more important in this mod. Consider the cargo capacity of an undomed colony in Proportions (rather large). Consider that an enemy's fleet is seriously limited by maintenance costs. Hmm... there is some potential there.

PvK

[oleg]

PvK,

I am convinced that restoring original DL cargo but raising its size to 40K is the best solution. It will make DL-3 roughly equivalent to CB-3.
Yes, it is possible to make drone carriers by combining DL/CB, but did you try it ? It is just a different and unnessary layer of micromanagement. Besides, it is _very_ difficult to instruct AI to make any sort of usefull drone carrier now. I personally gave up. 40K size will not unbalance cargo and should decrease micromanagemnt considerably.

Drones are a tricky subject and MM obviously spend a lot of time balancing them. They do the same incrediable amount of damage in normal SE IV, but cost a lot of resources and are destroyed in battle. In strategic combat even lowly scout can trigger launch of hunderds of drones for immense lost of resources. I do not consider restoring the speed of large drones as unbalancing. You argue that larger drones make small one obsolete, but, hey, that is the whole point of investing thousands and thousands points into research !

Drones do not have extra defence bonus as in standard SE IV. Besides, proportions ECM jammers go up to 31K in size, compared to flat 10K in unmoded game.

[ May 25, 2002, 04:47: Message edited by: oleg ]