Finite resources or not?

[tbontob]

Phoenix-D

I agree with you. I would think there would be a patch to upgrade to Gold.

As Fyron says it is not really a new game.

I must say I am a bit surprised as I had just assumed MM had provided a patch for the upgrade to Gold.

[couslee]

I can agree with some of what your saying. When I play, I tend to stripmine a planet down to 0/0/0 and turn it into a research/intel facility after that. If I want to keep mining that planet, I can build a value improvement plant. Perhaps, the AI should build more of those.

If one feels the AI should mine more asteroids, that is fine and the problem is in how they handle remote mining, not with finite resources.

As for planets running out of resources too soon, in years terms, that I won't argue. That is a balance issue imo, and not an AI fault. The game is too mineral intensive and support too high and mining capabilites too excessive for any kind of realism. A planet's resources being depleted in 20 years is not as silly as being able to mine 1% of an entire planet's resources with one mining facility. However, there are other facilities in the game that counter that.

OTOH, depleting rare minerals is not that far off base. Space vessels are not run on abundant charcoal and saltpeter. I imagine they run on things like uranium (how do you think the uranium gets "depleted" for DUC weapons). If earth had to build a fleet of space vessels that used that, not running out within 20 YRS would be an amazing feet. Plutonium, Gold (circuit Boards), Diamonds, Kryptonite (some as of yet undiscovered mineral), ect. There are a number of examples that one could use that are limited on "this" planet. Just because currently the demand for use in not there, does not mean they become infinite when a demand is created. Esp, in the needed quantities portrayed in the game.

As for modding the game, I would prefer to keep this topic on the most current Version and not some tweak. That has it's benefits for both sides of the argument. I personally prefer to play games that are not modded. the exception being to fix bugs. IE: starting resources choice of 1000kt and only a base 500kt storage available. Whether you choose to fix the starting option or the base storage value is a matter of choice. (I chose the base storage value) ).

See, I have. It was hard to build up enough of a fleet to take a planet from the AI. It kept beating me back. When I finally could however, I saw it had nothing left. I took over all the AI's and saw they were broke.

Exactly, you both spent a lot of resources on a war. Both races suffered the cost of that war. Not only was the AI broke, but you were too. Correct? And if not because you built value improvement planet, ect., and the AI didn't, then the problem is in the AI build priorities.

Regarding the other topic, I don't have a problem with Gold being an expansion pack, as it was a considerable amount of time after the SEIV release. The ones that piss me off are the ones that come out with the "expansion" pack 2-3 months after the game is released. All they are doing is splitting the game in half to make you pay double of a single game. That CLEARLY is not the case with SEIV. Don't get me wrong, I am glad I didn't have to hunt down an original copy of SEIV to use the Gold expansion, but there were enough changes made that you can't play SEIV against a SEIV gold player. there may not have been a lot of major changes, but there were enough. And an "expansion pack" should be able to "update" and original release. That is why I said it is #5 and not 4.5. Of course, if they called it SEV, people would complain there were not enough changes. lol. Guess it's just a matter of perspective.

[Fyron]

You can not play SE4 with someone that has a different patch Version of the game. So, it only makes sense that you can't play gold with non-gold. MM was considering including non-gold on the gold CD, but there was not enough space after all of the extras were put on.

[couslee]

Originally posted by Phoenix-D:
"If you think the SP game is too easy and you use infinite resources, perhaps you should try some harder settings."

The AI doesn't handle finite resources very well, so actually that setting could make the game -easier-.

Phoenix-D

Like I have stated, I don't have a lot of games under my belt. But in my current game, I don't see that as an AI defect. The Phong and I both expanded during the early game and met about half way across. There has been a steady flow of ships and intel attacks from them, and I have seen advanced tech conning at me. They have colonized a number of systems, and although some things make me wonder, resource gathering facilities have been balanced. Personally, I would not put 30/30 reasearch facilities on a plant and not put a data bank there, but hey, maybe he didn't have the right tech at the time. But I have seen a good mix of gatherers on most of the planets. The gathering facilites also seem to coinside with the best value on that planet. Granted, the AI could use some work, but resource gathering has not been an issue.

I have noticed some people are playing SEIV gold, and others are playing SEIV 1.49. Lots of threads about what people would like to see in the next patch, too bad thay can't put out a special patch that would put all of us on the same page. (IE upgrade 1.49 to 1.78 gold, or whatever the current patch # will be). I am a little supprized they didn't do that when the "gold" was released. "Gold" should be the final Version of a game, not a new Version. The gold should have been called SEV, and they would be working on SE6 now. It just strikes me as odd.

[ January 26, 2003, 12:37: Message edited by: couslee ]

[Ed Kolis]

I prefer unlimited resources just because even the thought of limited resources sounds constricting - what if everyone runs out and it turns into a stalemate where everyone has so many defenses and not enough attack fleets? Still, maybe I should give it a try sometime, given my penchant for joining PBW games with "unusual" twists

[Desdinova]

i tried a few games with finite resources. i noticed the first turn after completion of a mining base it would show several hundred thousand in resources as being mined in the empire status window. but then would reduce to what that facility would actually produce on the next turn. has anyone else noticed this.

[sparhawk]

There was a game hosted by 1fstcat called Limited Resources. The idea was that on a map with 8 players and only a few planets, resources would become very valuable in the end.
But in the end everyone had enough of them and only 5 % of my mines were depleded.
So it ended as a normal hack and slash SEIV game.
Although yuo had to make some efforts in designing a race, much more focussed on maintance, mineral/organic and radioactive mining.
We are now starting with limited 2 and I'm really curious if we can deplete our mines faster and get a real fight over resources.

Sparhawk

[Wanderer]

I can agree with some of what your saying. When I play, I tend to stripmine a planet down to 0/0/0 and turn it into a research/intel facility after that. If I want to keep mining that planet, I can build a value improvement plant. Perhaps, the AI should build more of those.

Unless I am very much mistaken, the AI can upgrade facilities, but not replace them. Those planets it fills with mineral miners in the early game will remain like that...

Between human players it depends a lot on maintenance reduction bonuses and careful planning.

Space vessels are not run on abundant charcoal and saltpeter. I imagine they run on things like uranium

Current space ships (e.g. the Space Shuttle) use hyrdogen fuel cells (hydrogen + oxygen & a catalyst = electricity + water?) and solid oxygen fuel. Hopefully in the future they'll have nuclear fusion working - as fusion only requires hydrogen, which is rather abundant in the universe.

A technologicallly advanced race (e.g. Asimov's First Foundation) would be able to work out how to use dwindling resources efficiently.

[PvK]

The AI is no good with finite resources.

It also doesn't make direct representational sense to be able to mine a planet down to zero in a matter of years.

However, I think it does make more interesting multi-human-player games using the unmodded game set. I have seen a couple of these in advanced stages, and they limited fleet sizes and development practices in interesting ways.

You can still get unlimited resources when playing finite resources games - you just have to build enough Value Improvement Plants.

I think it may tend to have a side-effect of creating lots of research planets, and zipping through the tech tree, so I would recommend using High research costs.

It's also lame that the resource total replaces the extraction rate multipliers, so every planet extracts at base rate, so you lose the interesting detail of having some planets more productive than others.

But if I had to play an unmodded game, I'd want to play PBW (no AI) with limited resources.

PvK

[atari_eric]

Originally posted by Wanderer:

quote:

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Space vessels are not run on abundant charcoal and saltpeter. I imagine they run on things like uranium

Current space ships (e.g. the Space Shuttle) use hyrdogen fuel cells (hydrogen + oxygen & a catalyst = electricity + water?) and solid oxygen fuel. Hopefully in the future they'll have nuclear fusion working - as fusion only requires hydrogen, which is rather abundant in the universe.

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Yes, but what do they build the reactors out of? Do they need, say, Technetium catalysts?