SEV- Thread on Obfuscation (MM is involved)2weeks to post

[Suicide Junkie]

Each species needs a 'genetic code' as part of its definition. It could be something fairly simple like a 4 digit hexadecimal number, with each digit standing for a degree of similarity.

Rather than trying to make each digit represent a level on your taxonomy tree, why not just use it as a genetic code flat out?
The degree of similarity is how many digits match.

(binary for simplicity of example - decimal or hex would be better I agree)
01010-11010-10100 - Krill (5/15 matches)
10001-01101-00101 - Terran (control race)
10101-01001-00010 - Bobroba (11/15 matches)

Your plague could generate some semi-random codes, and the more differences, the less virulent and deadly it would be.
The randomness would depend on how high your tech level is... the higher tech, the closer you can get it to your target race.

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Perhaps the genetic code could be user-chosen during race creation, or even better would be if it were based on some function of the traits and characteristics you pick.

Then a race which chooses not to play the berzerker with maxxed aggression and defense and maint reduction would get a very different code from all the other copycat races...
The copycats would then all get thrashed by the same plague bomb

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Ooh, and the race using plague bombs should have to take extra care not to infect its own populations when the ships return home after an attack. The ships should be infected when they fire, and have to visit a medical facility for treatment or self destruct to prevent infection of the race that built it

[ May 08, 2004, 02:31: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Baron Munchausen]

I supposed the 'tapering off' model would be a good way to deal with chemical weapons since the chemicals would indeed tend to hang around for a while, just not 'reproduce' themselves. So a declining kill per turn might be better than a kill on the first turn and then no more for certain weapons. But we will still want a 'neutron bomb' type weapon that kills population immediately with no after-effects.

The genetic code thing is just supposed to be a simple way to represent the very complex factors of life. The longer you make this code, the more variation you can have, sure, but also the more complex the game code gets. I think that a few digits is enough for our purposes. If you give plagues and bio-weapons a 'range' of effect as well as categories I think you can create some fairly interesting interactions with 4-8 digits.

("Range" as in +/- a certain amount from the actual match but with less virulence. So you can have a perfect match suffer full effects while a species that is +1 or -1 would still be affected but less than a species that is a perfect match.)

I guess the bio-weapon would have to have its range independently defined at each 'code' digit. Messy but well worth the variability in use.

[QuarianRex]

I don't have time to read the entire thread right now, so I don't know if this has already been mentioned (or is even appropriate), but what I would like to see is starcraft style fog-of-war for previously visited systems. The ability to remember which worlds were alien homeworlds (and not possible colinization destinations) would be greatly appreciated.

[Suicide Junkie]

Baron:
You could simply set a 100% fatality rate, with 0% incapacitation. All infected people would die at the end of the turn, ending the "plague".

Even with a neutron bomb, not everyone will recieve an instantly-lethal dose, though... most would end up suffering a longer and more painful death at the outer edges of the bLast's kill zone.

It also allows for medical personnel to save some of the people. (Presumably the ones with the smallest doses)
Left untreated, more would die from survivable doses of radiation/toxin/plague.

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As for the number of digits in the code, definitely the dec/hex would require fewer digits to get an appropriate level of variation.
Computers are great at number crunching, though, and the optimum number of digits would depend on how efficient the implementation is

[ May 08, 2004, 03:57: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[Paul1980au]

The idea of a few turns to fully kill off the population is a good idea - how about a intel project plant plague bomb - which would kill a % of people on a planet - would be cured next turn but could be used to weaken enemy planets and also with such a intel project a flexible amount of resources to put towards a project such as said above

Say 5000 intel points might be enough to kill 50M pop
10000 intel pnts say 100M pop
ANd rising steadily to say 200000 pop which would be enough to wipe out a large planet of say 2B population

Just some additional ideas to play with

The idea of progressing levels of scanner and extended range is a good idea. Some new components could reduce enemy scanning in a sector - sort of like increasin scanner tech vs increasing levels of anti scanner tech.

[Roanon]

Excuse me for returning to topic in this hijacked thread

Fog of war is nice, but it should not just increase micromanagement. Forgetting given informations in not fogging, but forcing to micromanage. So, if you get informations about a system it is ok that you do not get the latest info every turn, but you should continue to have access to that latest info known to you. Disadvantage: this would create a lot of additional data per result file. But in times of Gigabyte HDs and DSL this should be tolerable.

There should be far more levels of sensors, revealing planet and/or ship details in increasing detail and ranges. Ownership of a planet and number of population should not be known instantly when you enter a system, but a sufficiently cheap scanner should allow you to get at least the "colonized" info from a large distance. May make the game more realistic, but much to chancey if your colonizers only get the "already colonized" info when about to settle down there. Data like number of colonists, and even number / type of facilities should be revealed only by better, more expensvie scanners, though.

I think ship names are fun. But they should not be given automatically revealing the class and the serial number. Especially when constructing new ships it is really bad that everyone seeing them built instantly knows how many other ships of that type you already have if you do not micromanage and instantly rename every ship. Ship names should be left blank and should be shown to everyone if you choose to name your ship. The classes should become visible when you have scanners to detect a ship's components. Too much micromanagement to manually write down a list of components of every ship encountered, compare them, and keep track of classes internally.

[ May 08, 2004, 12:07: Message edited by: Roanon ]

[Suicide Junkie]

If only the host keeps a copy of the full map, and each player has a separate .gam file to download, each player's file could be populated with the info they have seen Last.

The downloads for each player would be smaller, at the cost of more storage space on the host machine.