Colony ships, for sale cheap!

[PvK]

The colony ship and population notions are nice - again, similar to my Proportions mod (huge expensive slow colony ships that can only carry 1M population, and a very slow (realistic) population growth rate and effects on production).

I'm not sure why cloaking is coming up in this thread, but the system below has very nice ideas. I especially like the gravitic effects by hull and will do something similar in future Proportions/Foundations mod Versions.

Spiffy ideas here!

PvK

[PvK]

To go into more detail on what Proportions does and what effects it has on play, much of what dogscoff describes is there, though there are some things which I may add from his ideas to the next Version.

Proportions is the first step towards my larger and more sweeping Foundations mod, so I haven't done nearly all that I set out to do, but currently, population are 1000 kT each and reproduce only annually, rather than each month, which removes the silly "minimum 1 million new civillians per month" reproduction rate. The population effects curves are dramatic and detailed at the low end. Resource production gets up to normal with fairly low population, so mining and research/intel colonies don't require billions, but construction only slowly rises throughout the curve. This means that it takes between two and three years to build a single resupply facility on a new colony, unless a huge armada of population transports comes along, and even then it takes a while. An interesting side effect is that event crises like core instabilities and even plagues (which I modded a bit) can be major important events that the player may want to build large exodus fleets to try to save population - and will have a really hard time evacuating much of a homeworld at all even with dozens of transports and a few years to evacuate.

Also, I greatly reduced the value of colony facilities while loading homeworlds with "Cultural Center" facilities which represent developed civilizations and give a lot of abilities, and would take an extremely long time to build on a colony world. Then there are intermediate urban facilities of various sizes which are fairly long-term investments but are attainable during a game and have a respectable output.

Pseudo-Newtonian propulsion and supply limits do have interesting effects, though not quite what dogscoff had in mind. My colony ships are 1800 kT (1500 taken by colony module), require 8 engines, and with ion engines can only make speed 2, which has similar effects to his vision of making colonies a long trip. They are expensive enough that they become a major part of the fleet budget if many are fielded at once, and of course they are very vulnerable if not escorted, because they are both weak and slow. The colony module itself gives cargo storage of 1000 kT, so it can carry one population unit. Only medium transports or starliners (new ship class) can carry a population unit, and the max for a transport is two or three. I had to reduce the capacity of cargo modules and unit launchers to balance this out.

Supply has become a major factor, and resupply depots are one of the most important things a colony can provide. On the other hand, the capital ship range limit described by dogscoff is not really in Proportions, because supply components are cheap - resupply ships become a useful design. I think in order to get the effect of limiting capital ships to developed systems, they will need to be slower and maybe need to have a supply cost from their ship size/class - I'll have to test if that's possible.

Small ships are quite useful in Proportions, however, because of the movement system, the size to-hit modifiers, the limited electronic warfare mods, reduced costs, and lower engine requirements.

The AI seems to handle it pretty well, although only in my latest (post-Gold) Version does it know what to build on colonies, which makes a huge difference. It also has a hard time dealing with the supply range limits in some cases, though I have been working on that with some success.

However I think still it would be best with only human players, also because capturing a home world would be a huge prize, and players would probably concentrate on trying to rob them from the AI. Cultural Centers do add a lot of cargo space though, and the AI does seem to build a truly formidable array of weapons platforms on them, so I think it's at least interesting to play against. I'm hoping when Gold is released and PBW restored, we can get a good multi-player game going to try it out.

PvK

Edit: corrected stats on colony ships

[ 27 January 2002: Message edited by: PvK ]

[dogscoff]

PvK - your proportions mod sounds brilliant!. Did you say it's on the Gold CD?

Another reason to look forward to that CD coming into my letterbox...

S_J - I like your system . Sensors / cloaking has needed a revamp for a long time. Looking forward to it=-)

(Sorry I'm not posting more after your exhaustive Posts, but it's late and I'm on dialup and I just drank lots of wine and... well... later.

[ 27 January 2002: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[dogscoff]

Here is something I posted in the "modder's brainstorming session" thread, May 2001. I've tweaked it a little for this thread:


First, the map generator files would have to be modded to make colonisable planets/ systems rarer and farther apart. This would increase their value and force players to look beyond their home systems.
Huge maps with fewer empires would also help.

Now, make transport hulls, colony ships and colony components far bigger. I'm thinking maybe 800-1000 kt colony ships with harsh combat penalties, and a 700-900 kt colony component which can nonetheless be destroyed with only a few shots. The colony component should also be prohibitively expensive- this might have the added effect of making retrofit "cheats" impossible (due to the 50% rule).

Cargo components should be split into 2 types: Small ones and huge ones which will only fit on transports. The ones for smaller ships should be of limited use and efficiency, forcing players to use large ships for any serious cargo movement. Unit sizes could be increased, to further limit the usefulness of small colony components.

Now adjust supply usage/ storage so that long range travel is really difficult for large ships, but relatively easy for smaller ones. I think you'd have to use some kind of quasi newtonian system with a steep curve in favour of small ships.

Setting up a new colony would now be a *major* investment (and hence a *major* risk)- especially in another system. You would also find it difficult to transport weapons platforms and other defences with your colony. The colony ships would be slow, fragile, and easy to hit in combat, and would have to cross many systems of empty space before reaching their destination. A "bodyguard" fleet would be essential.

Colonising your home system would still be fairly easy, but newly colonised systems would be extremely vulnerable. This is good, after all it's a long way home. Facilities should take longer to build, so that a new colony does not establish itself and become independent of external defence/ support too quickly.

The supply restrictions on bigger ships and cargo restrictions on smaller ones would limit the expansion of infrastructure, so military domination would then revolve around the strategic placement of fleets, mines, sats, space stations and colonies rather than simply racing to develop the bigger production base and throw ships at the enemy.

Glassing a planet would be a desperate measure, and troop attack/ defence essential. Perhaps tweak weapon platform mounts and population toughness to make established planets less easy to conquer, but balance the added effectiveness with higher cost, again restricting the rate at which a new colony develops independence.

Fleets of small ships would be able to roam from system to system and rule over frontier space. However they would be more or less powerless against the defences of established systems. Attacking such a system would be an enormous project, involving gigantic motherships subject to similar limitations as the transports. However, you'd constantly be on the lookout for new colonies to conquer, since they would be comparatively easy to take but represent a huge reward. Kind of like predatory animals preying on the young, the weak and the sick at the edges of the herd=-)

Acquiring non-military techs (ie colonisation, stellar manip, cargo, supply) would become more important. Remote mining would play a greater role, as would moons, storms and nebulae. Physical warfare would become the Last resort when diplomacy and intel fail, although having good defences around your home systems would be more important than ever.

It would make for a much slower and more deliberate game, since ships and planets would no longer be "throwaway" items. Combat would be rarer but when it happened it would be truly epic, with loads of allied empires in gigantic battles.

Some or all of these ideas may have been implemented in PvK's proportion mod, and I'm sure there are things in there which might be applied to all what I've posted here. Tweaking the population bonuses for colonies in favour of well developped worlds would help, as would enhancing the cloak/ sensor system for advanced cat & mouse games in all those empty systems. Some of S_J's components (ie hardened bulkheads, cheap/ quality mounts) would make good additions since they make ships more individual.

I don't know how the AI would cope with all this (It might do quite well actually) but it would be cool for human players - a whole new game with a whole new feel.

[PvK]

Cheers dogscoff,

yes Proportions is on the Gold CD, although by the time you get it, there'll be a new and improved Version.

PvK

[PvK]

I looked into supplies used by larger ships, and don't see a way to do it except by engines (I don't think anything else can be made to use supplies per movement - if someone knows differently, please let me know).

So, to make larger ships more range-limited, all I can think of at present (since larger ships generally have _more_ spare space for supply storage), would be to jack up their engines/move rating, and then provide two sorts of engines - high-output engines with high standard thrust but high supply consumption, and long-haul engines with lower thrust but lower supply consumption. In this way, a large ship could be either very slow and long-range, or reasonable-speed but short-range (or jammed full of supply storage). The side-effect would be that you could put high-output engines on a small ship and get a very fast short-range interceptor. Which might be a neat system overall - I'll play with making Proportions more this way, and see what I can come up with. I think I won't make it as extrme as dogscoff mentioned, because Proportions ships are already pretty short-ranged unless they stock lots of supplies, and I think just having large ships be significantly slower already limits them pretty well.

PvK

[eorg]

engines with 0 movement required in larger quantity in bigger ships? called crew quarters?

[PvK]

Hmmmm, worth trying to see if it can work - have you tested it yet?

Even if it does work, master computers obviate the need for crew quarters, so some fiddling might need to be done, at least, to compensate.

PvK

[Val]

Just started catching up on this thread, can't wait to try the proportions Mod on Gold, sounds incredible! Have you seen the pop curve that SJ had modded for the B5 mod?

[jimbob]

quote:

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a large ship could be either very slow and long-range, or reasonable-speed but short-range (or jammed full of supply storage). The side-effect would be that you could put high-output engines on a small ship and get a very fast short-range interceptor. Which might be a neat system overall

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= Good!