Proportions 2.5.2 mini-patch feature preview

PvK · #1 December 7th, 2002, 06:18 AM

Well, the point of the change is to make it so that you can only spread your production abilities about as efficiently as (or at least, not much more efficiently than) can by done via colony ships. Especially, your ability to build colony ships. Because, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be able to colonize much more quickly and efficiently by sending out a space yard ship to build a colony ship at the colony location, than by sending out a colony ship built at the homeworld.

Supposedly in Proportions, a colony ship includes a large amount of the things necessary to establish a new colony capable of supporting signifigant populations and industry and so on, on a completely alien and probably very inhospitable planet. Many of these things are only available in sufficient quantities, and/or buildable, at a homeworld or fairly established colony. These sorts of things would be represented by organic resources, and the ability to build with them at a location.

The requirements for building military equipment are considerably less diverse, and can mostly be covered by the kinds of things represented by mineral resources and mineral construction ability.

Moreover, one of the design ideas was that by making colony ships slow and expensive, the task of colonizing distant worlds would require planning, investment, escorts, and danger of attack. The fast SYS tactic tends to shortcut this.

Now, the maintenance costs of a spaceyard do abstractly acount for the expense of supplying construction materials to it (via those invisible small resource transports we have to assume exist). However, in the current state of the mod, it becomes both faster and more efficient to build colony ships at or near their destination using space yard ships, after a few systems' distance from planetary shipyards. I don't think the technique should be entirely prohibited, but I do think it should be made less efficient.

So some combination of the organics cost method we've been discussing, and/or adjusting the speed and cost of space yard ships, seems needed to restore the goal of making it more difficult to spread the production base and colonies into deep space.

PvK

oleg · #2 December 7th, 2002, 01:09 PM

What if to add "engine" ability to SY with value 0 ? Then it will slow down SY ship to the speed of colony ship ! But then you will need another SY for bases only without "engine"...

Fyron · #3 December 7th, 2002, 01:13 PM

What is more special about the colony ship than the population transports? There is this great expense and time to get 1 mil pop on an empty world, but then you can send many millions more to it much, much more quickly. Seems inconsistent to me. Yes, setting up the colony is expensive, time-consuming, difficult, etc. But, so is adding more room to the colony to house all those new people.

And why do colony ships always have move 2? Shouldn't they get a bit faster with better engines?

oleg · #4 December 7th, 2002, 04:33 PM

They do, but with gravitic drives. Actually, it makes Propulsion experts trait quite usefull -colony ships move 50% faster ! (3 instead of 2)

Fyron · #5 December 7th, 2002, 11:14 PM

Ok then... why do they only increase in speed with only the most advanced technology? Why can't Contra Terrene engines, or Jacketed Photon Engines, or Quantum Engines make them move faster?

oleg · #6 December 8th, 2002, 01:31 PM

Well, because PvK wants that way !

Technically speaking, it is because better engines do not provide bonus movements but give extra "movement points". They all add up and then diveded by hull's engines/per move number. It is very big for colony ship so the resulting number is rounding up back to 2 rather then 3 even for advanced engines. If you want to mod proportions in a way that better engines help colony ship, edit data data files and decrease max. number of engines and engines per move for colony ship hull. Personally, I would like it too. Itjust does not make sense that even most advanced engines can not push CS any faster then ancient ion engines I ! It is just like putting B-29 propellers on B-747 and expecting it to fly the same 500 mph !

dogscoff · #7 December 8th, 2002, 07:02 PM

I can see the "realism" argument that better engines ought to make the ship faster, but on the other hand I can see PvK's point about slowing down expansion by slowing down colony ships. I guess you could make up some technobabble about the colony component beiong too fragile or something, but it doesn't really matter.

Perhaps a compromise would be to research a seperate tech area (further research in colonisation, starliners, ship construction & propulsion?) to get a better, potentially faster colony hull.