Hi, all--

[Skulky]

I really want to have supply lines, like keeping ships supplies with tangible supplies and having to protect these lines from cloaked invaders (i have been wanting to do this since C&C, and red alert came out). Then cloaking would have yet another use and tricky *** generals could relle start to kcik booty.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Skulky:
I really want to have supply lines, like keeping ships supplies with tangible supplies and having to protect these lines from cloaked invaders (i have been wanting to do this since C&C, and red alert came out). Then cloaking would have yet another use and tricky *** generals could relle start to kcik booty.

Is there a way to stop the three resource types from being teleported wherever needed, and thus require one to actually transport organics to mining worlds, radioactives and minerals from mining worlds to the homeworld (for using in building things), and manufactured products (aka ships/units/cargo) to close the loop?

For that matter, it would be interesting if diplomatic guestures like trades actually required shipping freighters full of resources to the other race's designated trading port or production facility, depending on trust and convenience.

"Finite resources" doesn't seem to work that way, but hopefully something can still be done. For instance, I was thinking of making planet and mobile-ship-bourne shipyard production very limited (except for the homeworld!), and require one to construct starbases in order to produce starships in a sane amount of time.

Ah. I begin to see why people want components to be able to produce resources, intelligence, etc. :-) Wow, thank you, Derek, PvK, SJ, & dogscoff, the others in the TDM modpack, and anyone else who should be thanked (and Aaron/MM). Comparing the different ideas between the different mods has helped me to understand quite a bit more about how the game works.

-Chuck

Has anyone else tried to represent the three resource types to represent production, food, and energy? Have factories mine minerals and have the production cost of everything be represented as that. Have organics be food production, and have total organics maintenance represent orbital supply lines for perishable commodities. Ie, run out of organics and your crews are starving. So crew quarters, supply bays, and emergency resupply all require tons of food and have a high organics maintainance.

Doesn't matter if your home planet has tons of food on the ground if you don't have the orbital infrastructure to keep your crews fed in the next system. :-)

[tesco samoa]

Keep in mind that a turn is 30 days.

So the resource converter is not out of the question or unbalancing.

The Stars! resource gathering will not work in SEIV style.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by tesco samoa:
Keep in mind that a turn is 30 days.

Certainly. Hmm, I don't want to get bogged down in the specifics of implementation yet, particularly as I don't know enough about what other people have already tried.

I'm reasonably familiar with the 'standard game' and TDM-modpack (probably ~50 games total), and it seems like most people discuss and make changes in proportion to that. Becoming familiar with, say, how DevNull or Derek's mod alters these balances will take a bit of time and a few games, not that there is anything wrong with having to play a 'few' games of SEIV. :-)

So the resource converter is not out of the question or unbalancing.

The Stars! resource gathering will not work in SEIV style.

Yes. I suspect you're also cautioning me indirectly to learn the difference between feasible ideas (ie, ones which do not require modifications to the game engine or hard-coded functionality) and ideas which are non-feasible short of divine intervention from Aaron. Well, that's certainly good advice.

-Chuck

[Suicide Junkie]

I really want to have supply lines, like keeping ships supplies with tangible supplies and having to protect these lines from cloaked invaders (i have been wanting to do this since C&C, and red alert came out). Then cloaking would have yet another use and tricky *** generals could relle start to kcik booty.

In P&N v2.6 (currently being tested) I have made SE4 into a finite supplies game.

There are no quantum reactors, or resupply depots.
Bases have limited supplies as well, so you need to build in solar panels or send a tankership every now and then.

There are supersized solar panels for bases, with no tech requirements, so you can actually resupply your first ships in a low tech game.

When a ship runs out of supplies, they lost shields, weapons and movement, so supply lines are very important.

In addition, supplies represent physical ammo and fuel. Your DUCs will bleed supplies, but will cost next to nothing to build (small amount of minerals, no organics, single-digit radioactives)
Missile weapons are even more so.
Energy based weapons like the meson bLasters and Incinerator beams require only 1 or 2 supplies per shot.

Energy requirements are represented by radioactives cost (so the Meson bLasters are very expensive rad-wise), and people requirements are represented by organics cost. Psychic weapons, and biological stuff of any sort all require organics.