A newbie writes:

[raynor]

quote:

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Originally posted by Jon Brave:
OK, since you're being so helpful...

Conditions, Value, Population, Growth, Happiness, and structures which improve them --- what's the precise relationship? What do I get out of building my plebs a Climate Control or a Pacification Center? Is the maximum number of permitted facilities dependent on an unchangeable planet size?

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First, it is important to understand that you get production bonuses based on the population level. For example, I think it is 5% at 100 million on up to 40% (I think?) at 1000 million, etc. So, you want a large population so you can build ships faster.

With that in mind, the conditions on a planet seem to affect the population growth. I have never paid any attention except to note that with deadly conditions my growth is zero. I think some folks have said that deadly conditions can cause your population to drop.

If you research Planet Utilization, you get the Climate Improvement Facility which improves the climate conditions by 1, 2 or 3% per year. (A year is 10 turns) We don't know various percentages on the different descriptions of conditions so I don't know how you would know if the planet's conditions have improved much.

Your race's happiness is determined by the type of race you pick. The types equate to aggressive, neutral and passive. Aggressive races are more happy with wars, neutral are more happy with nothing (made unhappy by change?), and passive more happy with peace treaties. I don't really understand this as well as some of the smart folks who play this game. I largely ignore it.

If your population is happy, you get a production bonus. If they go so unhappy that they riot, you don't get any production at all. Newly conquered planets are more likely to be unhappy with you and move towards rioting. You can fix this by building facilities such as an Urban Pacification Center I, II or III in the system. Or, you can station troops on the planet and/or?? put a fleet in orbit. Once again, in most of my games, this doesn't impact things much, and I don't worry about it.

The maximum number of facilities is based on planet size and the atmosphere type. If your race breathes oxygen, and you build a colony on a world with an oxygen atmosphere, you get the full number of facilities for the planet type. They are:
Tiny - 5
Small - 10
Medium - 15
Large - 20
Huge - 25
If you don't breathe the atmosphere, you are stuck in domes and lose the use of 80% of th e planet. Thus, you would only get: 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 for tiny through huge planets respectively.

You can gain the full use of atmosphere types you don't breathe by either conquering a race that breathes that atmosphere. Transport, for example, hydrogen breathers to a hydrogen world and transport them to the planet. Now, transport your oxygen breathers to your transport ship. Voila! The dome is gone, and you get full use of the planet. This is far and away the quickest way to do this.

Alternatively, you can research WAY up the Planet Utilization tech tree to get Atmosphere Modification Plants I, II or III which convert the atmosphere to a breathable type over 3.0, 2.5 or 2.0 years. The facility takes about 5 turns to build, I think I recall.

In an earlier post, you saw planets that didn't have either a green plus or red plus next to them. I think maybe you were seeing oxygen atmosphered worlds that weren't rock worlds. There are three different types of worlds: rock, ice and gas giant. You start the game with only one of the three techs and have to research, trade or steal the other two. There are five atmosphere types:
Oxygen, Hydrogen, Methane, Carbon Dioxide and none.

If you are an oxygen breather and you only have rock colonization tech, you should see the following for these worlds:

Type - Atmosphere - Symbol
Gas - Oxygen - none
Rock - Oxygen - Green Plus
Rock - Methane - Red Plus
Rock - Hydrogen - Red Plus
Ice - Oxygen - none
Ice - Methane - none

Hope that helps. Ask as many questions as you like. Workin' on my Sergeant's stripes, ya know.

P.S. Did you know that you can customize the way ships look? You can make them look like Star Wars, or Babylon Five, or Star Trek, etc... (Not on this thread, but can't fail to mention my favourite feature!)

[Tomgs]

One other note it takes years for climate control facilities to have any effect. On good and mild planets I have seen them turn to Optimal after 6 to 10 years but unpleasatnt worlds in that time haven't even changed to mild. I am using a nature shrine in my current game (It has the same effects as the climate control and the Urban pacification center systemwide) I am 10 years into the game and none of my unpleasant worlds have gotten better at all.
Atmosphere modification facilities on the other hand work pretty fast 2-3 years. So conditions are probably on a 100 point scale since 30 points doesn't even change its state.
I believe conditions go Deadly, Harsh (only asteroids or planets damaged by events or war), Unpleasant (Why would a homeworld be unpleasant and other worlds in the galaxy have better conditions than your homeworld? Maybe pollution?), Mild, Good, and Optimal.

[Drake]

I've never been on a planet that was less than unpleasant. How do they get to deadly? Anyway, you lose 3% growth from optimal to good, and 2% for each level below that, from what I've seen.

I wouldn't be surprised if planets only show unpleasant while having some lower value. If they were capped at unpleasant, you wouldn't see a change in the conditions until they actually made their way internally up to unpleasant, and then to mild. I don't know if this is the case, but it seems possible.

If you want to know the guts of what things do, look in the data directory at the settings. Most of the info is somewhere in there.

The bonus to construction and production is 5% at 100M, 10% at 500M, 20% at 1000M, and an additional 10% for each 1000M beyond that, up to 90% for 8000M. You'll also get +100% for 10B if you stick that many ppl on a ringworld or sphereworld.

-Drake

[This message has been edited by Drake (edited 30 January 2001).]

[DirectorTsaarx]

There've been a couple Posts about tweaking the production modifiers for population levels (to give even higher bonuses for those ringworlds and sphereworlds). I'll see if I can bump them back to the top of the forum

Also, happiness affects production too; I think there's a 20% bonus for Jubilant (usually spelled "Jubiliant" in the game, but I think they're fixing it in the next patch), and steadily decreasing bonuses for the other happiness levels. I think angry actually has a production penalty (-5% or -10%), but I'm not certain. I think you also get a reproduction increase for higher happiness levels.

Oh - and the only time I've seen Deadly conditions is as the result of an Intel operation (or one of those "Random Events").

[alasyr]

It's my experiance that game does'nt mark rocky (maybe ice world) worlds orbiting larger worlds.

[Puke]

quote:

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Originally posted by alasyr:
It's my experiance that game does'nt mark rocky (maybe ice world) worlds orbiting larger worlds.

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yep, as far as colonies go for the +'s and the flags, only the top item on a stack gets marked. this is a good way to hide things from humans if you colonize a moon that is orbiting a pile of asteroids (ie from a destroyed system or planet)

[raynor]

quote:

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Originally posted by Puke:
yep, as far as colonies go for the +'s and the flags, only the top item on a stack gets marked. this is a good way to hide things from humans if you colonize a moon that is orbiting a pile of asteroids (ie from a destroyed system or planet)

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You make a very good point.

When you are systematically annihilating an enemy system, don't forget to check every planet in the stack. I can't tell you how many times I've thought I destroyed an empire only to check the score and find they still have one or two planets left. Then begins the long search to see where you might have missed something...

[Jon Brave]

OK, again everybody has been very helpful.

To summarise:
* more population => more production
* better conditions => more population growth
* happiness => more production

Seems to me then that if a planet has reached max. pop. there's no longer any point in improving conditions as this only leads to more growth, not more production? (Unless of course you're intending to ship people off in future).

I have built climate improvers but not noticed any difference in conditions report. People point out this takes years, and I keep forgetting a year is 10 turns, not one. And you can't see the percentage it's reached. So I guess they're probably working, but slowly.

First part of Planet Util. delivers climate improvers (more growth), next part delivers atmosphere changers (more max. pop.) and Last part delivers resource value increments (more extraction) --- right?

Why should I bother with biological weapons or climate harmers? By the time I've managed to get my bombers close enough to a planet without getting shredded, I just bomb (napalm?) them out of existence. Am I missing a useful feature here?

It has been said that happiness depends on your initial race's "orientation". My colonies seem to vary from Indifferent to Jubiliant [sic]. I haven't done any conquering (just originally empty planets); no special events. So why the difference? And is there anything I can build that would improve this? For example, is an Urban Pac. Centre only for really miserable planets or planets you have conquered or have mixed pops? If I want all my plebs to be really happy with me what do I have to do?

My earlier question about lack of "+" symbols on Rock + Oxygen worlds (I'm a Rock + Oxygen) *appears* to be that I can't see the system at present, and since I Last saw it someone else has colonized it. My confusion came from the fact that the list of habitable/breathable/empty planets still shows these; presumably it's only updated at the time you see the world properly. That's fine, I just didn't understand it.

If I get helpful answers to these there's always more to come --- you guys are great!

[rdouglass]

quote:

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Originally posted by raynor:
[B}When you are systematically annihilating an enemy system, don't forget to check every planet in the stack. I can't tell you how many times I've thought I destroyed an empire only to check the score and find they still have one or two planets left. Then begins the long search to see where you might have missed something...[/b]

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When I do that (genocide thing), I make sure the system I'm in does not have a triangle over it in the Galaxy view window. If you can't see anything in the system view and there is a little blue triangle (on the system you're in) in the galaxy window, there's still something there....

[DirectorTsaarx]

Jon:

You're close: it's condition improvers, then resource improvers, then atmosphere converters.

As for happiness: it depends on your "happiness type". Oddly, for "neutral" races, just colonizing a new planet decreases happiness. They also don't like treaties, unusual events, building warships (I think), enemy colonies in "your" systems, basically anything that doesn't involve sitting around contemplating their navels. "Peaceful" types get happy about new colonies, new treaties, etc. and unhappy about wars, enemy ships, other races' (whether enemy or ally) colonies in one of "your" systems, etc. Finally, "Bloodthirsty" types get upset about treaties, new colonies, other races' (whether enemy or ally) colonies in "your" systems and they get happy about wars, destroying enemy ships and colonies, etc.

This is just a small sample of what goes into happiness; read the various "AI_Anger" files (in the AI directory; I think aggressive=bloodthirsty, defensive=peaceful and neutral=neutral) for more information.

And build an Urban Pac. Center in EVERY system (I'm pretty sure it's a system-wide effect, so you don't need one on every planet). If you use the Temporal technology trait, use the "Temporal Vacation Center" instead; if you use the Deeply Religious trait, I think you can use one of the shrines. They may not be better than the Urban Pac. Center, but since you'd be researching the racial technology anyway, it saves you from researching Psychology as well.

At least that's how I play, and my planets stay "Jubiliant" (they're fixing this typo in the next patch - although it's been around since SE3). I find that if I don't build a happiness facility, my populations eventually get less and less happy. Not to mention that conquered races STAY unhappy, and frequently end up rioting.