Proportions mod 1.5.2 released (and web page)

[oleg]

Some notes:

It is possible to ameliorate the problem with short range AI ships : use "warp points can be located anywhere" in quadrant set up. In general, it reduces the travel across the system by 40% and should help AI a lot.

Black holes are a problem for AI even in normal game. Here, with speed 2 colony ships, they are a real death trap. Either reduce the gravity pull to 1 or remove them completely.

I think it would be a good idea to separate engines and efficient engines into separate Groups. As it is now, every time I upgrade design, all egines are set to "efficient" and I have to reset them manually. Very annoing. Also, it may help AI to design long-range ships

IMHO, the cost of Natural merchants should be increased even more. To start with extra homeworld cultural center instead of useless spaceport is very nice.

Does "cursed" racial trait works ? I want to try it but I am scary for my homeworld.

[PsychoTechFreak]

quote:

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Originally posted by oleg:
Does "cursed" racial trait works ? I want to try it but I am scary for my homeworld.

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Well, this is a trial of faith. Even if it is not working, PvK should leave it in. At least it would give you goosepimples from time to time, "it could be... maybe..."

I will do some further checks on this question tonight, but from what I have observed so far, neither lucky nor cursed does work, but maybe ?

[dogscoff]

Oh, cursed works. Believe me, cursed works...

[wr8th]

Yes! This is the mod I'm waiting to play once I feel my experience level is worthy. I've been playing for almost 2 weeks now, getting my wife hooked to it (she was upset that another two races were bombing her colonies so she built better ships armed with whup-***. Hell hath no fury...)

After MOO2, I felt that the planet development was too fast in SE4G and the effect of population or lack thereof, is understated in the unmodded Version. Yes, this would likely make the game longer, but the value placed on good planets (med to large; breathable) is greater and makes for more realism in development.

[PvK]

wr8th, thanks for the feedback! Yes, that's what I intended and it seems to work rather well. In single-player, anyway, I think it actually doesn't play that much slower because although more turns pass before things get developed, there is less production management to do on those turns. Multi-player will probably get off to a noticeably slower start, though. Although, players can send out interesting ships from the early game to duel for rights to undeveloped space, rather than it just being a colony-ship race.

quote:

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Originally posted by oleg:
Some notes:
It is possible to ameliorate the problem with short range AI ships : use "warp points can be located anywhere" in quadrant set up. In general, it reduces the travel across the system by 40% and should help AI a lot.

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Actually, all I think I need to do is give the AI some designs that use efficient engines (and possibly supply storage), and they should be fine unless they get stuck behind a wall of black hole systems (in which case, they won't get through until they can build faster colony ships).

quote:

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Black holes are a problem for AI even in normal game. Here, with speed 2 colony ships, they are a real death trap. Either reduce the gravity pull to 1 or remove them completely.

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Yes. What I'll do is make some more system types that are more AI-friendly, by removing black holes. I'll make one the default system type, and add a note to the setup tips.

quote:

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I think it would be a good idea to separate engines and efficient engines into separate Groups. As it is now, every time I upgrade design, all egines are set to "efficient" and I have to reset them manually. Very annoing. Also, it may help AI to design long-range ships

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Absolutely - this is coming in 1.5.3 and 1.6, hopefully tonight or tomorrow.

quote:

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IMHO, the cost of Natural merchants should be increased even more. To start with extra homeworld cultural center instead of useless spaceport is very nice.

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Yes, the cost overlooked the cultural center increase. I'm a little surprised it even does that, since cultural centers include space ports. It makes for a way to start with an extra cultural center. I'll adjust the cost - thanks for pointing that out.

quote:

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Does "cursed" racial trait works ? I want to try it but I am scary for my homeworld.

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PsychoTechFreak has been testing this. Indications are that nothing actually affects event likelihood, but the tests need to be refined a bit to make sure.

I was thinking I'd remove the advantages if they weren't working, but then it occurred to me that once we're sure, we can tell Malfador, who will probably patch it at some point, at which point all opportunistic players who took "Cursed", thinking it would have no effect, will get their due... muahahaha!

PvK

[ 26 March 2002: Message edited by: PvK ]

[dogscoff]

But cursed *does* work, I'm sure of it. I'm currently playing solo proportions with a cursed race, and I've been having ships explode and warp to other systems all over the place. Some of it might have been intel I suppose... Maybe I'll just blame those pesky Phong.

[PsychoTechFreak]

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:
muahahaha!

PvK

[ 26 March 2002: Message edited by: PvK ]

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Second that.

I have refined my longterm simulation scenario, some interesting side results:
- galactic peace within the first 2 years, means no events from 2400.0 until 2401.9, never.
- the master planet is NEVER affected by high and catastrophic events, just by low and medium events
Definition "master planet": The planet that is selected at game start, first cursor, means in a one homeplanet game this would be the homeplanet. In a 10 planets game, the master planet would be immune from high/catastrophic events, the other 9 could be affected, this goes along also with system events, like star explosions.

Default setup: Proportions, high event frequency, three races Lucky, Neutral, Cursed. I have changed the proportions event.txt, changed the title of every event to low/medium/high/catastrophic according to its severity, this helps to evaluate the number of counts of the different severities, another change has been done to the effect amounts, I have set all of them to zero. I could post it, if someone is interested to do some experiments unless PvK disagrees with it.

BTW, PvK, do you think 1 year is enough time to evacuate a core instable planet in Proportions ?

Simulation status now : 30 years, some interesting results so far, but I will keep my secret for a while

[geoschmo]

quote:

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Originally posted by oleg:
IMHO, the cost of Natural merchants should be increased even more. To start with extra homeworld cultural center instead of useless spaceport is very nice.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Pvk:
Yes, the cost overlooked the cultural center increase. I'm a little surprised it even does that, since cultural centers include space ports. It makes for a way to start with an extra cultural center. I'll adjust the cost - thanks for pointing that out.

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The reason for this is quite simple and predictable. The natrual merchant doesn't need a space port on the homeworld, so they get an extra facility determined by the facilities file. It ignores the fact that the cultural center has an ability it doesn't need (Space Port), it is only looking for abilities that it does need (Resource Production). This selects the available facilitiy that produces the most of the resource needed. Mineral, rad, organic, research. Since the Cultural center in Proportions produces more of these resources than any of the resource specific facilities, it is chosen in each case. In a non-proportions game, after a certain amount of each of the other resources are accounted for, the remainder of the homeworld is filled up with mineral miners. But in Proportions the cultural center is better at that too, so it gets selected.

Geoschmo
EDIT:Err, what I meant to say is that in proportions the standard production facilities have been removed entirely.

[ 26 March 2002: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[PvK]

quote:

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Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:

BTW, PvK, do you think 1 year is enough time to evacuate a core instable planet in Proportions ?

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No, generally not! Unless you are late in the game and have already built a number of large starliners with high-tech cargo bays, and/or you have someplace nearby to evacuate the population. I've played a couple of games where I tried to evacuate homeworlds to escape catastophic events (or even plagues), and even if you emergency-build dozens of transports, although you can save a lot of population, usually many more of them can't be saved. It helps if there are nearby colonies so you can ferry back and forth and re-use transports quickly. So, it's pretty interesting and worthwhile to try to do this, but even with a huge fleet of transports, it's really hard to move several billion people in a year.

Then afterwords, you end up feeling a little silly with a huge fleet of population transports... . Hmm, refit them into hybrid warships?

PvK

[PsychoTechFreak]

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:


I was thinking I'd remove the advantages if they weren't working, but then it occurred to me that once we're sure, we can tell Malfador, who will probably patch it at some point, at which point all opportunistic players who took "Cursed", thinking it would have no effect, will get their due... muahahaha!

PvK

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Mmmmh, let's see, a proportions game might take about 3 years divided by
MM's patch frequency +666


50 year simulation displays the following, and I got enough of it for now:

Abbreviations for severities:
L= low
M= medium
H= high
C= catastrophic

Three races in one multiplayer game,
Lucky race:
L= 12
M= 8
H= 3
C= 5 , Four out of ten planets have blown up

Neutrals:
L= 8
M= 3
H= 0
C= 5 , Three out of ten planets have blown up

Cursed:
L= 15
M= 9
H= 4
C= 3 , One out of ten planets has blown up

Although I have set every amount effect to zero, some of the events still do something, like warp points are closed, ships are teleported through the quadrant, planets explode, stars explode and so forth.