Non A.I. issues for upcoming patch

[JeffG]

How do you tell if a race is a "neutral" race? I just saw an interesting situation where it seems the Sergetti split into two factions. Deep into a game, after the whole quadrant had been explored, I received a "First Contact" message with, I think, the Aldans. These people looked like the Sergetti and the race profile referred to them as Sergetti, and was the exact same text that the Sergetti had. What's up with this?

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Cheers!
Jeff George

[Taqwus]

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Originally posted by JeffG:
How do you tell if a race is a "neutral" race? I just saw an interesting situation where it seems the Sergetti split into two factions. Deep into a game, after the whole quadrant had been explored, I received a "First Contact" message with, I think, the Aldans. These people looked like the Sergetti and the race profile referred to them as Sergetti, and was the exact same text that the Sergetti had. What's up with this?

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They probably got PPP'd; often the planet forms its own faction rather than joining the PPPer (who may then be able to get the new faction to surrender, possibly giving him tech -- whereas the other result yields none).

One tip-off: ISTR that the neutrals at least used to have, if they don't still, completely average characteristics with no advanced traits.

[Nyx]

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Finally, the number of facilities you could operate on a planet would be determined by population. It should take a nearly full planet to operate that size of planet's full allotment of facilities. The facilities in excess of what could be operated by the current population would be "idle". Idle facilities ones would be labelled as such on the facilities report, and you would be able to reorder the facilities in some list for each individual colony to enable the ones you want.

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There's actually already a flag for that in one of the data files. I think it would be interesting if there were greatly relaxed limits on the number of facilities built, but population limited the ones in use. Make the flag a facility-based variable, not a game-wide variable, so Cargo facilities take fewer people to man than a shipyard or some others. Then rework the robo miners facilities to provide additional manpower for facilities instead of increased output.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

[Alpha Kodiak]

I've had this game for a couple of weeks now, and I'm having a bLast with it! A couple of thoughts regarding attacking planets have come up and I wonder how others feel about them.

First, it seems to me that planetary weapons should really be the only type of weapons that could knock out large populations. I can see the ability to knock out industrial capacity and other facilities to some extent with other weapons, but I just used a fleet of about 10 ships using mostly DUCs to wipe out 4 billion sentient beings. I can't see how projectile weapons, unless we are talking REALLY BIG projectiles, could kill large numbers of people from space. Mind you, from a game perspective, I can live with it and still enjoy the game, but it just doesn't seem right from a reallity perspective.

Second, it seems likely that if you do enough damage from space to wipe out 4 billion people, that the conditions of the planet should be affected by the attack. While I'm not an environmental researcher, my guess is that there would be severe atmosheric and geological effects caused by pounding a planet that hard. There should also be a lot of depleted uranium dust floating around, based on my above example. As far as I can tell, the planet is pretty much in pristine condition and waiting for me to colonize it as soon as my colony ship shows up. Seems like I should at least have to clean up the dead bodies or something.

None of this is to take away from the game, it's just some ideas that came to me while playing it, and I wonder what other people think.

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Ursoids of the galaxy, unite!

[Taqwus]

Hrm. _Domed_ colonies perhaps should still be fairly vulnerable. Even if you assume that this refers to multiple domes (you pretty much have to, for colonies on the scale of SE4's), breaching domes would still be far easier than trying to bombard 500M with acid, DU, missiles or what-not.

(Perhaps a new facility: underground shelter? Provides refuge for some limited pop against plagues and fairly high resistance against orbital bombardment of most kinds. Not sure how to reconcile it with gas giants, 'tho...)

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Alpha Kodiak]

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Originally posted by Taqwus:
Hrm. _Domed_ colonies perhaps should still be fairly vulnerable. Even if you assume that this refers to multiple domes (you pretty much have to, for colonies on the scale of SE4's), breaching domes would still be far easier than trying to bombard 500M with acid, DU, missiles or what-not.

(Perhaps a new facility: underground shelter? Provides refuge for some limited pop against plagues and fairly high resistance against orbital bombardment of most kinds. Not sure how to reconcile it with gas giants, 'tho...)

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Good point on the domed colonies, although those aren't going to get the really big populations. I was really thinking about the undomed colonies. Some kind of protective shelter for colonists is an interesting idea.

Another thought, weapon fire is almost guaranteed to hit a planet (99% I believe), but while hitting the planet is easy, I would think that hitting something important would be much more difficult. Landing small caliber rounds in the ocean shouldn't do too much damage (cause a lot of steam, maybe, because those things are going to be HOT after surviving penetration of the atmosphere).


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Ursoids of the galaxy, unite!

[JeffG]

What does "PPPed" mean?

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Cheers!
Jeff George