SFTC

[Kana]

President_Elect_Shang said:
My first on-line game would be with my own Mod? This must be some kind of a new record. I have been saying I want to try an on-line game so I suppose this is the best chance. I get to bug test and play an on-line game. There are still experimental components that may not work as they should. However, I am still up for it. Someone would need to host and is there a set of instructions on "how to" process and submit your turn so I can know what to do? Finally which version would be played; the Full or Lite? I am playing a solo self vs self game of the Lite version now.

Are we still having problems with PBW? I'm sure Geo would upload the files you need to play...If we use PBW, I would certainly considert playing as well...

[President_Elect_Shang]

I have no idea how it would work. You would have to ask Geo but I think he has all of that fixed now. Since I have never done this before I would have to be a follower. Someone else would need to be the GM or whatever they are called. I will give my full support to the GM to help them along and tell them how to best setup the game. So who ever feels like doing the leader part don't think I am sticking you out in the cold without even the slightest support.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Amongst the changes in the next patch will be the replacement of Minerals and all Mineral icons with "MC" for Mega Credit. How much is a MC, more than a buck less than infinity. Organics will remain unchanged using the default SE5 icon. Finally I am thinking of changing the Radioactives icon with a little figure of a person. I have no art skills so it may just be as simple as a stick figure. I will try to search the net and probably ask David if he can help me. The challenge is that it must be discernible as the figure of a person and still fit in an area no larger than 19x19 pixels. If all else fails I can always go with this == [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Running.gif[/img]. I seriously doubt David would even find this fun much less a challenge. I think I will PM him after this post as I don't want a person running, it looks dorky you know?

Anyway back on the Radioactives, or Personnel as they will be called. I am thinking of setting this to be the same as the number of crew that hull size calls for. So lets take a Destroyer for example. A DD requires 30 crew so the initial cost would be 30 Personnel and maintenance would be 4 or maybe 5 if SE5 rounds up. I'm not sure? This would reflect the initial crew for manning the ship and the maintenance would reflect the crew rotation. New members coming on board to replace those who have rotated to another ship or left the service, etc. Thoughts anyone?

[Kana]

I like the idea, considering it is like the table top game. Yet how does this interfact with SEV crew and control requirements? Do those thirty crew equal the number of crew SEV requires? Also since crew is taken from the population, how does this 'new' resource (crew/radioactives) correspond to the population of the plant?

[President_Elect_Shang]

I can tell its been a long time since you played. Crew from planets was cut in favor of streamlined rules. You just build and go now. They figured that since you must have a supporting population medium size or larger to build ships the crew you need will be there already.

SE5 Crew and Control are set by me. Take a look at SJ's GGMod. He has a very complex crew system. As for the crew/planet portion of your question I don't know of anyway to tie the two together outside of the fact you need to build facilities. Limiting the crew points to only the system they are produced in is not possible. SE5 will not restrict the ability the SpacePort uses. In other words I can't tell it to ship only organics and MCs but not personnel. In this case I won't need to rely on handwaveum to explain what is going on. This is an interstellar empire so populations and crews are going to be shipped about. Not by canon but if I was going by canon I would have to restrict the ShipYard Component to only planets with certain populations. That won't happen!

My ideas for a facility are "University" which produces trained personnel for crews. I was also thinking of "Military Academy" which would have half the production of the University, cost twice as much, but provide the training ability in conjunction to the resource production. I am thinking of taking out all the production ability though, with the conversion to MC land is no longer in shortage. If I can ever get this planet generation sorted that will change the land surplus some. But I still need to get the right ratios of available space to planet size sorted out.

[President_Elect_Shang]

Here is a capture of the change over to the MC system. Ok I know it isn't greatest but at least you can read the letters. I think they are a wee bit to large.

[President_Elect_Shang]

I didn't have plans to post what is on the next patch until I had it ready to go. However, considering the recent discussion over Retro-Construction I decided to post this:

2. Added -- Components may now be sorted by clicking “Filter Comps” in the “Create Design” Window. Options for sorting are “All Components”, “HT 1”, “HT 2”, so forth up to “HT 16”, and “Required” as in components that are required on most but not all designs.

That will make the design portion of normal and retro-construction much easier.

[Kana]

Well if you change Rads to Crew, then you will have to consider what creates crew on planets. So far I assume you mean facilities. But as it stands now planets can produce the three different resources, so you would have to change or remove the reference to Rads from all of the planet/system creation crap. Plus can the planetary 'resource percentage' boost the output of 'crew'? I mean it all sounds good in theory and on paper, but will it actually work in the end...I still think that Aaron needs to gives a bit more control on changing and implementing resources. If a modder wants one, or 10 it should be an option, and being able to change the name to whatever is appropriate would be nice as well...without having to go in and change Icons and pics and such...

[Phoenix-D]

How exactly do you propose to change the resource without changing the picture? It'd be a little odd to have a radiation symbol hanging around if radioactive have been replaced by something else.

[Suicide Junkie]

Changing the symbol is easy.

The planetary value would involve how well the local people take to space work. Think combinations of local gravity, culture, tech utilization, etc. Universities could improve the value via education. Extraction/Recruitment centers would probably reduce the value, since they're skimming off officers.

Or if you want the resource to be more general "work", then the value would be the economic efficiency of the colony. Work storage facilities would be vacation centers and amusement parks (When not needed, people "take vacations" (filling storage), then later they "work overtime")