Babylon 5 Mod - Page 18

Val · #**171** January 19th, 2002, 01:38 AM

Hah, responded to my question before I posted and I responded to your request before I read it

I'm aiming to put it all in the excel sheet and then run a merge with a word doc and save it as txt from there. At least that is how I did the Engines (seemed to work fine). So I shouldn't need any coding, just some guidance on tonnage and material costs.

I actually have the merge all set to go once the variables are in. It will also generate Tech Areas

Fyron · #**172** January 19th, 2002, 03:31 AM

Well that sure takes the "fun" out of modding!

Do you have any preliminary damage/kiloton ratios, or do you need that too?

Fyron · #**173** January 19th, 2002, 03:35 AM

Also, what tech levels are these weapon types going to require? Does an Antimatter Cannon I and an Antimatter Converter I require the same tech level, or what?

Which weapons are supposed to be weak-powered? medium-powered? high-powered? uber-powerful? I mean, which weapon types should have high damage/kiloton ratios, and which should have low ones?

There seem to be a number of #DIV/0! in the damage fields.

[ 19 January 2002: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Suicide Junkie · #**174** January 19th, 2002, 08:57 PM

Ok, guys. I need comments on the population modifiers I'm doing.
See it in Graph Form (.gif) (Note: the horizontal lines are 25%, with light blue every 100%. The vertical ones are 100M pop, with light blue every 500M pop.)

So far, I have about 1300 distinct population modifiers, one for every 5M people, up to 2 Billion people, then one every 50M, up to a filled sphereworld.

The base Construction rate is 10% of normal.
You get +1% for every 50M people.
Maxed out sphereworlds can thus produce at 12.8 times the normal spaceyard rate, and 4.5 Billion pop planets get 100%.

Resource production looks like a sine wave.
It starts at 15% normal for 1M people, rapidly increases sine-wave style to a peak of almost 200% at 450M people.
It then follows a stretched (3x) sinewave back down to the minimum 10% resource production at anything over 2 Billion people.

Comments?

[ 19 January 2002: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

Phoenix-D · #**175** January 19th, 2002, 09:29 PM

What's the logic behind the resource drop? I'd think it would be a pain in the butt to manage..

Phoenix-D

Suicide Junkie · #**176** January 19th, 2002, 09:38 PM

From most of the way down page 3:

quote:
What's the reasoning for prod rate going down? Out of curriosity.

quote:
The production would be going down as the planet gets paved over to support those 8 billion people.

I imagine resource extraction would rapidly rise until you hit 500-1500 million, then start to go back down again, in a lopsided wave shape when graphed vs population.

Notes:
(on planets with max pop close to optimum production pop)
-domed planets. The pop is concentrated in the domes, so most of the land is unspoiled.
-tiny breathable worlds. Low gravity would allow easy construction of tall buildings, so you don't waste as much surface area.

So, I'm at the low end 500-1500 M.

And suggestions are welcome, since it is really easy to tweak any of the parameters.

Const numlevels = 12800 (12800 increments of 5M people = Sphereworld pop)
Const popbase = 1 (Million)
Const popincrement = 5 (million)
Const SYbase = 10 (%)
Const SYincrement = 0.1
Const Resbase = 10 (%)
Const ResPeak = 90 (90 increments of 5M people = peak at 450M)
Const ResPeakAmount = 100 (times approx. 1.9)
Const Resend = 400 (400 increments of 5M people = downto resbase at 2 Billion people.

PS: With those parameters, there will be 1641 pop modifiers

[ 19 January 2002: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

jimbob · #**177** January 19th, 2002, 09:42 PM

For resource production,

So if I have a huge planet with zillions of mining facilities (presumably because the planet has lots of minerals) I'd have to keep exporting people from it, or I end up with extremely poor production?

Did I read that right?

If so, could the right hand shoulder of the graph plateau at a higher value (say 100%) so that the planet value doesn't crash so dramatically (the only other option would be for the player to invest significant time in micromanagement - assuing that he even knows how badly production drops off with high population values!).

[edit] - ohh, sorry I was writing this while you were already posting yours, so I hadn't read your response. Makes sense, I'd just suggest the higher final value, ie. 100% instead of 10%... sure things are paved, but there's more people to do the resource aquisition.

[ 19 January 2002: Message edited by: jimbob ]

Suicide Junkie · #**178** January 19th, 2002, 10:14 PM

quote:
sure things are paved, but there's more people to do the resource aquisition.

More people to work less land?
The way this works is to make domed worlds and tiny (very low gravity) worlds much better at producing resources than the Glass & Steel worlds that are great at spending those resources and/or doing research & intel.

The high-pop minimum could stand to be raised, but not to 100%! The falloff on the right happens between one and two Billion people, and we are talking infinitely sustainable resource production.

Also, we are not talking micromanagement, since you have a wide, 600 Million pop-wide window of > 150%, and a 1 Billion pop-wide >100% resource production.
Check on your colonies yearly, move people every two or three years...
(Unless we reduce the growth rate to realistic levels, then you only have to check your population every decade).

The final decision is of course up for a vote, but I would like to keep the right shoulder below 25%.

Phoenix-D · #**179** January 19th, 2002, 10:21 PM

The space argument seems a little strange; most SE4 worlds hold less than Earth does right now, and we have by no means paved over the entire planet!

Besides, wouldn't things like mining and radioactives extracton be done mostly under the surface?

Phoenix-D

Suicide Junkie · #**180** January 19th, 2002, 10:32 PM

quote:
The space argument seems a little strange; most SE4 worlds hold less than Earth does right now, and we have by no means paved over the entire planet!

Yeah, but we do have an above-average sized world (for a rock or ice planet), and we don't exactly have a sustainable economy.
Since the modifiers can't measure "%full", they will be off for exceptionally large/small worlds.

quote:
Besides, wouldn't things like mining and radioactives extracton be done mostly under the surface?

Yep. But you probably don't want them for neighbours. You might also have some problems with pollution, making it harder to work & extract & purify the resources.

Again, I want to say that you guys will have the final say on the settings...