Tales of Known Space

[DavidG]

See what you've done. You made me dig up all my old Larry Niven books and start reading them again. Don't forget to add that really realy big and really realy fast engine that takes up 99% of the space on a baseship so Beowolf Schaeffer can visit the centre of the galaxy. hehehe

[JonSh]

Well, the more I mess with it, the harder this mod is to do. Here are some of the considerations:

I have about 10 alien races. 7 of them need access to General Products hulls (puppeteer), and then have *similar* techs but not absolutely congruent. Then I have 3 races which need completely independant tech trees (Pak, Thrint, Tnuctip). So what I really need is more logic operators in the TechAreas and Facilities then I have. or I can build lots of basically duplicate items and balloon the files waaaaay up there

Then there is the issue of behavior and realism. First, puppeteers are going to act like an incredibly powerful neutral, they have already started their great migration and don't really want to interract with anyone.

Then, we need some different colonizing/utilization parameters. For instance, Pak and Kzin are definitely going to want to make facility-size defense units for planets, sattelites and platforms and orbital bases not withstanding.

Would the Pak bother with planets that breeders couldn't live on? Sure, maybe as weapons facilities or automated mining yards. But you would definitely treat them differently.

And everybody would have orbital laboratories, we need that in the code

Starting conditions: how do I start the Kdat as slaves of the Kzin? How do I start the belters and Flatlanders in the same system and have them cooperative?

Dyson structures will make my head hurt so will planetary-sized cannon...and the fact that there are no warp points in the niven universe (damm these hard scientists ) And yes, it would also be nice to have better ways to trade stuff, like GP Hulls

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And so, I'm still thinking about Known Space, but I'm also thinking about the Mote Universe of Niven and Pournelle: warp points, langston fields, saurons, moties, MacArthur and Lenin battlecruisers, etceteras.

And there is the universe of the Merchanters Alliance (merchanters/cyteen/earth company)...the hinder stars, very big stations at important stars, very few planets, warp point travel, Mazziani Strike carriers with riderships full of space marines (Commander Edmund Porey aboard the carrier Africa)....

[geoschmo]

Sounds like you need to write a new game.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by DavidG:
I'm wondering if it is poossible to have only one race be allowed to build them and then another could trade for them and upgrade it with components. I'm thinking this would be impossible since I think you would have to be able to build a hull before you can upgrade it.

There is a way. It would be kind of a mess though. We have talked about it for other things before, but it could be applied to this concept.

You could modify all the comps/vehicles/faciliites/units in the game, so that they don't require and Rads to build, only Mins and orgs. Then you mod the space yard faciliites so that they only build with mins and orgs, but you give the Puppetteers a racial tech space yard that can build with all three. Then the pupetteer hull tech can be designed by anyone, so it would be posible to upgrade and stuff by anyone, but it can only be built by someone with a pupetteer space yard. Only problem would be if somone captures a pupetteer planet.

An alternative to that that would be a LOT easier to mod would be make the Pupeteer hull be a really obscene amount of one resource and give the pupeteers a space yard that builds with a lot of that resource. Then the other races could build a puppeteer hull, but it would take a REALLY long time. This would eliminate the need to change all the other ships/comps/facs. Problem with this would be maintenace on the ship. You could give the hull a big maint reduction to bring it back into line with regular ships I suppose though. But it would be a little wacked out. After the maint reduction the maint on your special ship will be all one resourse which is a little odd.

Geoschmo