Proportions Mod Versions 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 available

[PsychoTechFreak]

[quote]Originally posted by Aloofi:

Settlement: 5Kt of each resource
Col. Commun: 10 Kt of each
With 50 % upgrade it takes exactly the same time to build one colonial community than to build a settlement and then upgrade.

Sure, in case of the upgraded facility costs twice as much as the starting facility. But it is another story if the difference is more than double value, like from minor city to metropolis for example:

Minor city 15000 (each min/org/rad)
Metropolis 100,000

You build a minor city and upgrade with 50,000 to Metropolis means you pay 65,000 overall, a profit of approx. a third (time and material)

Minor city to Megalopolis (250,000) even more:
15,000 + 125,000 =140,000

But I see, it seems to be a necessary kind of compromise. It does not have to be too expensive, so upgrades would not be worthwile against scrap-and-build, OTOH I think the compromise should be more between 60-80%.
Reasons for that:
-Refurbishing a house to a castle is more expensive than to scrap it and build a castle
-Usually the production output is lower than normal during upgrades, but the city is producing 100% during the upgrade activities

[ February 27, 2003, 08:54: Message edited by: PsychoTechFreak ]

[PvK]

Uuf... I catch the flu and fall way behind on this discussion. Actually, it's probably good to not to be always chiming in immediately, but it will be a while before I can cover everything. I will just throw in some ideas.

* Upgrades and return-on-investment times are generally things I have studied and done deliberately. That is, I expect people to consider upgrading from a city to a metropolis, instead of building a metropolis from scratch. It also makes more sense - metropoli are generally cities for a long time before they become metropoli.

* There is a major effect of lag and return-on-investment to be considered. The question of "which construction path is best?" can only be answered if you first answer the question "how soon do you need a return on your investment?" Often the best thing is to build as many small-scale facilities as possible first, and then build larger facilities one at a time. The dilemma becomes, that this makes the upgrade technique start to become impractical, because SE4 only lets you upgrade ALL facilities of a type at once. So, you end up with a huge spectrum of possible ways to develop, and many of them are "the best" for different times by which you want the return.

* Having said that, I wouldn't consider it "wrong" to increase the facility upgrade cost. I think anything in the 50-100% range will work well. Below 50% will start to cause unintended effects.

* The "upgrade a house to a castle" argument doesn't really apply, I think, because facility "slots" should not be taken to literally represent real estate limits. Planets are enormous, and upgrading from say, a city to a metropolis, does not necessarily require doing anything problematic to the city.

PvK

[dogscoff]

Still, building cities should be considered something like a personal goal or a show of power.

If you're talking purely in terms of mineral production, then yes, but you forget all the other advantages a city facility can provide:
Resource storage
Shield generation
Unit storage
Research, intel, org and rad production
Space port and resupply (in some cities).

These are not to be discounted, especially on those planets or systems where you only have one or two facility slots and you want to cram as much as possible into a limited space. In my single player proportions games the vast majority of my facilities are cities of one kind or another.

[Aloofi]

Well, I was just posting some numbers I took to find out my own building path, but I don't feel like any change needs to be made.
The way I see it, the goal of unreplicable homeworlds have been acomplished, and as I said before, not everything in a city is for profit.
The only change I made on Facilities.txt was to add shields and more cargo space to spaceport facilities to represent the spaceport fortifications that I believe every spaceport should have by default.

One question though, how do you guys feel about adding 3 more shipyards facilities to regular tech comparable to temporal shipyards?
I just think that most racial traits are highly unbalancing.

[PsychoTechFreak]

Originally posted by PvK:
* Upgrades and return-on-investment times are generally things I have studied and done deliberately. That is, I expect people to consider upgrading from a city to a metropolis, instead of building a metropolis from scratch. It also makes more sense - metropoli are generally cities for a long time before they become metropoli.

I understand, some questions pop up on my forehead.
Is the AI somehow programmed/programmable to use similar upgrade paths?
Why did you take the Arcology (350,000) out of the path, I mean it could have a nice place after Megalopolis (250,000)?

Sidenote: It is really hard to capture AI homeworlds even in tactical combat after some 25 years. I guess in simultaneous/PBW it could be a non-capturable fortress with a few WP, troops and long range weapons...
I think, turn-based/tactical for single player is recommendable similar to Pirates&Nomads from my perspective. Mmh, or is it just that I am too bad...

[gregebowman]

Well, reading these Posts is really bumming me out. I hadn't played Proportions yet, and was all set to after downloading the new patch, when my computer got zapped by lightning. Now, it may take me awhile before I get a new one. But reading these Posts gives me the idea that this is one much altered mod that I've got to play when I get a new computer.

[dogscoff]

One question though, how do you guys feel about adding 3 more shipyards facilities to regular tech comparable to temporal shipyards?

Maybe... not really sure about that one. Whatever you do to regular yards, I think the temporal spaceyard definitely needs to remain superior in some way.

Maybe allow some super-high level spaceyards (normal *and* temporal), but the increases in research/ price give diminishing returns in build rates, so that you can spend a century researching and building a level XII yard but only get 6000 build rate out of it. In this case, temporal yards should be 2 or 3 levels ahead of normal ones in terms of price and research cost, or make them comparatively expensive/ innefficient for the lower levels but the better option as you start to get to the higher build rates.

What I would really like to see is greater use of the repair ability on facilities: Distribution centres could have a repair rate of 1, and maybe the space port + resupply combo facility too. Also, how about a range of "repair yard" facilities that can be built alongside/ instead of space yards to help get all those damaged fleets repaired? Sure, you might end up with a huge breathable repairing 60+ components per turn, but given the premium value of facility slots in Proportions I don't think this could be considered an abuse/ exploit, especially with the armour getting leakier and leakier in this mod