Proportions mod: So confusing!

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by PvK:
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How many years did it take to develop the unmanned probe to Mars that crashed because someone had a math error converting Imperial units to Metric, and how much did that cost?
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Posted by Graeme:
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It cost only around $150 million dollars, and took less than five years to develop. By the time a SE4 game starts, the people have faster than light drives, and spaceships that can travel across solar systems with a full crew within a single month. Their level of technology is far, far ahead of ours.

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Posted by Imperator Fyron:
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Well, again, your imagination of SE4's tech levels is simply much higher than mine. For example, I don't see SE4 as starting with FTL drives. Light takes EIGHT MINUTES to get from the Sun to the Earth. An SE4 turn is about a month. So, light speed in SE4 would be oh, probably well over 1000, not 6 (ion engine speed in SE4).
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But Graeme's point is valid though if you throw out the FTL part. Ships in SE4 don't travel FTL speeds within system, but they go a LOT faster than anything we can currently do. The Voyager Probes were launched what, 30 years ago? And an SE4 ship launched from Earth now could catch them in about 2 months.

You guys's got me thinking about FTL in SE4 tersm though. I didn't want to hijack this thread so I started a new one.

Link to OT thread

Geoschmo

[PvK]

The space yard ship shortcut to colonization is an irritant. I'll have to do something about that, and probably the asteroid mining base thing, at least for future Versions. I have a feeling people would get peeved if I changed it for existing PBW games... or at least, perhaps I can get feedback from players of existing PBW players on what if anything I should do to reduce the effectiveness of these techniques in existing games.

PvK

[ October 22, 2002, 15:51: Message edited by: PvK ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

But Graeme's point is valid though if you throw out the FTL part. Ships in SE4 don't travel FTL speeds within system, but they go a LOT faster than anything we can currently do. The Voyager Probes were launched what, 30 years ago? And an SE4 ship launched from Earth now could catch them in about 2 months.
...

Yes, his point that tech in SE4 is far ahead of our 2002 tech is of course valid. Again, it's a matter of proportions. He thinks the starting tech is so high as to be able to hand-wave away many problems. Infinite energy with no specialized fuel, the ability to survive in any environment, and the ability to manufacture anything immediately from raw materials, without any specialized research and design, all seem to be starting techs, as far as his point of view, while in my case, I see them as either at the end of the SE4 tech tree, or way above the entire tech tree.

One problem I have with imagining such high basic abilities, is that with those abilities, the raw materials and empty space provided by alien planets seem to me like they wouldn't be particularly helpful. The raw materials of a single planet would probably be more than enough to provide for all the needs of such an advanced techology. The main advantages of spreading out would be dispersion and maneuver, not providing "used up resources" or "room to study".

PvK

[ October 22, 2002, 15:48: Message edited by: PvK ]

[geoschmo]

[quote]Originally posted by PvK:

One problem I have with imagining such high basic abilities, is that with those abilities, the raw materials and empty space provided by alien planets seem to me like they wouldn't be particularly helpful. The raw materials of a single planet would probably be more than enough to provide for all the needs of such an advanced techology. The main advantages of spreading out would be dispersion and maneuver, not providing "used up resources" or "room to study".

Good point. And a lot of Sci-Fi ignores the whole "expand by colonization" thing. The assumption there seems to be more in line with your belief that starting a new planet from scratch takes a tremendously long time. Even in Star Trek with their matter replication technologies, terroforming worlds takes generations.

The large empires in Sci-Fi are typically built through conquering and subjugating exsisting alien populations with the infrastructure more or less intact. There are of course many examples of powerful empires that have star spanning influence, but these typically only talk about a few large population centers. I.E. "The Homeworld".

Problem is though with SE4, you can only have 20 players, computer or not. So it's hard to really get that satisfying "Master of all you survey" feeling when you only have one large planet and a half a dozen measly colonies that cost more to defend than they produce in return.

Geoschmo

[ October 22, 2002, 16:27: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Suicide Junkie]

The space yard ship shortcut to colonization is an irritant. I'll have to do something about that, and probably the asteroid mining base thing, at least for future Versions. I have a feeling people would get peeved if I changed it for existing PBW games... or at least, perhaps I can get feedback from players of existing PBW players on what if anything I should do to reduce the effectiveness of these techniques in existing games.

If you set the organics build rate on spaceborne yards to zero, then you could control which vehicles and objects require planetary support for say, crews.
Sats, mines, drones, retrofits and repairs can all be done, no problem. For fighters, only fully automated ones could be built.
(Make master computers use no organics, and possibly add a computer component for fighters)

You could have base-only yards that construct with organics, but require organics to build in the first place.
Call 'em "Full SpaceYard" and "Remote Spaceyard"

That way, orbital (full) yards would work normally, but you still can't build a full yard over an uncolonized planet...

In order to make absolutely sure people can't build a remote yard and then retrofit to a full yard, force them to be on different hulls. You could have the abilities built into 100kt copies of the Space Yard, (accounting for the 400kt of space saved).
Remove the components from available tech, so they can't be retrofitted onto regular bases.

[geoschmo]

As an alternate solution, you could lower the organic build rate of space yard components, but not remove it completely, and raise the organic cost of the colony component.

The limiting factor of fighter construction, and ship construction for that matter is typically the mineral content of the designs. You could probably find a ratio that make the colony ship inefficent enough to build on location, without seriously affecting the fighter build rate of the space yard comps, and without greatly increasing the build time of the colony ship on the homeworld, without requiring any further modifications. If it makes the maintenance too high on the colony ship you could add a slight maint reduction for the colony comp as well.

No it wouldn't totally remove the possibility of someone building a colony ship onsite. But the reason they are doing it is because it's quicker that way. Take away the incentive, and if they still do it, so what?

Geoschmo

EDIT: Actually SJ, I just realized the fighter comps don't reaquire any organics already. So no comp mods would be required either way. The only thing that could be a problem would be for a race that is organic.

[ October 22, 2002, 17:23: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[oleg]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
As an alternate solution, you could lower the organic build rate of space yard components, but not remove it completely, and raise the organic cost of the colony component.

The limiting factor of fighter construction, and ship construction for that matter is typically the mineral content of the designs. You could probably find a ratio that make the colony ship inefficent enough to build on location, without seriously affecting the fighter build rate of the space yard comps, and without greatly increasing the build time of the colony ship on the homeworld, without requiring any further modifications. If it makes the maintenance too high on the colony ship you could add a slight maint reduction for the colony comp as well.

No it wouldn't totally remove the possibility of someone building a colony ship onsite. But the reason they are doing it is because it's quicker that way. Take away the incentive, and if they still do it, so what?

Geoschmo

No, it will totally cripple AI - AI will still try to build colony ships on base space yards.

One of the major features of Proportions is that majority of ship building occur on orbital space yard - it takes too long to get a productive planetary space yard even on your first colony and you can not keep up with just one homeworld spaceyards. Any changes to space yards will have big repercautions and must be taken with big care.

In the meantime I think the reduction of colonyship maintainance can balance it a bit.