Colony ships, for sale cheap!

PvK · #1 March 15th, 2002, 02:25 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Rlaney:
How about this, Home planet generally starts at 2000m pop. Assume that that is the base 100% production setting then modify down 2% per 50 pop and up 1% per 50 to maximum of 500%. This works out to a maximum pop on huge world being at 220%(if my math is right). Now the question. Am I correct in assuming that the pop modifiers in setting are % values? So if I set one to 10 then they will build at ten percent....correct?

Yes, you can mod it to work this way if you like. Yes, that is how the pop modifiers work - they are in percentages.

PvK

Rlaney · #2 March 15th, 2002, 05:42 AM

Hey Pvk, you're the one who made the proportions mod right? I love it but I've made a few changes to it. I lowered the cost of cities a bit and added a negative resource cost per turn to research and intel facilities to make it more efficient to actually build up a colonies infrastructure than just slappin down r&d buildings. How do you think the AI will handle this? I can mod almost everything BUT the AIs. everytime I try the do funky things.

Actually after looking more closely at the way you set up cities, cultural centers, etc. I wonder if maybe there shouldn't be a negative cost on ALL facilities other than these to simulate subsidization of a colony as opposed to a planet with a thriving city economy. Specialized military buildings should almost definately have a cost associated with them, imho.

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]

Rlaney · #3 March 15th, 2002, 08:32 AM

Ok, I addded the maintenance cost for research and intel. No problem worked great. Suddenly an asteroid struck my home planet and wiped out 2 of the cultural centers there. Suddenly I can't support my research colonies and my fleet...what to do... Just a couple more turns and I'll have destroyers but will my fleet survive till then? This sucks...it's great!! Bad luck can just tear you up in this mod.

PvK · #4 March 15th, 2002, 08:56 AM

Yes, several of the events become more interesting in Proportions, because things take more effort to build up. A couple of times I've found myself doing all I can to evacuate populations with large fleets of transports.

The maintenance costs is a good idea and I'm glad it works. I agree that military installations should cost maintenance, although it will need to be balanced carefully and tested to see what good values are. In the early game there is an abundance of resources, but fleet maintenance is already pretty expensive. If facilities cost too much, it might be really hard to make much net forward progress at all. Take your game a bit further into the "mid game," and see if you're able to develop a helpful infrastructure.

Another neat thing might be to make pre-arcology urban developments consume more organics than they produce.

Have you been using fleets of transports to increase build rates? Cities can take forever if you don't, but if you can get enough population, then they become more practical investments. Of course, if you have enemies, those parades of transports should probably be guarded...

PvK

PvK · #5 March 15th, 2002, 08:59 AM

Oh, as for the AI, it sucks at developing colonies in Proportions Versions before the not-yet-released 1.5. This is fixed in the Version I'm about to release, and it might be ok even if you add maintenance costs, but it depends on how expensive they are.

PvK

Rlaney · #6 March 15th, 2002, 11:46 AM

I added -25 minerals -100 organics and -25 radioactives to the research center. The interesting thing is that on a new planet it comes out to -6 -25 -6. Be interesting to see if the cost increases as the population grows but I guess that would actually make a kind of sense as more people means more maintenance if not necessarily more productivity. BTW...I'm playing with finite resources turned on, I'm just guessing here but this WASN'T meant to be played with that option on was it!?!? LOL. My economy is collapsing...I can't maintain my Navy... I feel so Russian.

[ 15 March 2002: Message edited by: Rlaney ]

PvK · #7 March 15th, 2002, 12:35 PM

Ya, the reason is that your "maintenance" is actually negative production, so the maintenance cost will be in proportion to the amount of points generated by the facility, which is based in large part on the population of the planet. The curve is not as severe as the construction rate curve, though.

And no, limited resources will lead to disaster, because the cultural centers will eat away all of your homeworld's resources... you would need to add a powerful value improvement ability to cultural centers in order for Proportions to work with limited resources. I'll put a warning about that in the next readme file.

PvK