Proportions mod: So confusing!

[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:
Sure, it took Earth twice as long to build less than 18 cultural centers, but also consider Earth's population (the 6-7 billion mark we're at now is a pretty recent thing. It wasn't always like that!), our technology level (I assume a world that can build economical space ships would be able to produce more), and the fact that our planet is hardly a single entity of people like the united force a player controls in SEIV. Imagine what we could do if we stopped blowing each other up and built stuff together for a mere two centuries. I'd imagine we'd build those 18 cultural centers pretty quickly. I don't really expect homeworlds to build dreadnauts in one turn, but I would like to see production bonuses for larger populations increased to some degree to make facility building a little faster.

I'll give it a look, although it can be a bunch of work to re-do the population effect curve. Mainly though, as I said, I like the heavy constuction to be something that has to be built and maintained in space.

As for population transport... Why not make it more expensive to research level one and level two? The idea is that it still should be cheaper than building a battleship sized population transport in terms of research costs. A counter to the ease of population transport, as I've already suggested, is to decrease population reproduction and likewise increase the point cost of faster reproduction. This way an empire can spread faster, but not necessarily develop faster.

I don't quite follow what you're suggesting for a change to transport research costs. What do you mean?

As for reducing the reproduction rate, given the way population reproduction rate is calculated in SE4, I think it wouldn't be a very major effect. One has to have a certain minimum population before any difference in repro rates (besides 0% and "greater than 0%") will have on colonies without major population translocation.

The main reason I like cities is because of their compactness. One idea of making the city variants with much less hassle would be to only make 3 levels or so for each city. Instead of discovering a new city type each time you research applied research, mineral producion, applied intelligence, ect, given a new level of city when one level of every field is researched. Thus, the Metropolis Level 2 wouldn't appear until level 2 was reached in mineral production, applied research, applied intelligence, radioactives extraction, organics exctraction, and possily political science (on the grounds that urban pacification might help a little). Under this system, it might be wise to tone down the level 1 cities a little.

Ya, it's a reasonable idea. The SE4 upgrade system is still going to be somewhat problematic, though, since you can only upgrade along one path (and many players seem to like upgrading city->metropolis->etc), and the cost is always half the cost of building one from scratch.

Another idea would be to make a space yard-city combination in addition to the cultural world center that could possibly replace the space-cities that have a resupply depot built into them. This way one can bypass the 1-production limit by having one special production center and the rest of the buildings as other urban-type structures.

Yes, that's an interesting idea. Hmm. I wonder if it is possible to fool SE4's "one construction fac per planet" limit by upgrading from a fac without a SY to one that has one... that could be an interesting effect. Note though that if that does not work, then it will be impossible to build one of these cities on a planet that already has a shipyard.

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:
Just a clarification for my enhanced cities idea, since even to me it seems a little confusing the way I said it:

Instead of having a hundred or so city varients that reflect each individual advances, cities could instead reflect these individual advances but at less frequent intervals. These invervals could be marked based on levels in every area. When one level of every applicable field is researched, only then does a new level of a city become available. Thus, to uncover metropolis level two, one must research one level of applied research, one level of all three extractions, one level of applied intelligence _and_ perhaps some other appropriate techs (applied political science?). Thus, the advancement of cities based on other technology could be modelled without designing a hundred or so variants of each city to reflect smaller advancements in the individual areas. It isn't perfect, but it's a nice approximation. I'd also like to see easier upgrading in certain manners (upgrading metropolis level 1 to metropolis level 2 should be much faster than the current 1/2 of the time of building a new one, for example), but this area isn't necessarily a mod issue. I just think SEIV wasn't really designed to handle expensive facilities this way.

You're right - SE4 just doesn't handle complex upgrades. It's really only designed for upgrading to something of about the same cost, like in the standard game.

Your idea is a good one, although I don't know if SE4 would allow upgrades both ways (city->metropolis and city_1->city_2).

PvK

[PvK]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:

"18 of them? Well at 100 years a piece, that's only 1800 years. It took Earth more than twice that long to produce substantially fewer than that."

Not really. We've gone from pure agricultural to our modern infrastructure in about 200 years.

---

If all you care about is the infrastructure, sure. Of course, on the homeworld, there is the advantage that it is the correct atmosphere (composition, pressure, and weather), radiation levels, bioshpere, gravity, and temperature. Overcoming these is part of the massive challenge of creating a productive colony on an alien planet.

A Proportions Cultural center represents more than simply industry and infrastructure, however. It represents the culture, society, history, art, drama, economy, as well as the environment that makes it possible to run and sustain large-scale production, reasearch, and so on so that the planet actually contributes to an empire rather than sucking massive resources just to keep it in existence.

In particular, one of the reasons homeworld research centers are so highly rated compared to colony ones, is because I reject the SE4 premise that research is an additive and transitive phenomenon. Two labs do not research subject A twice as fast as one, and chemistry lab C cannot be switched to researching Applied Intelligence on a moment's notice, nor will it stop researching chemistry because Emperor Juvenile III insists that Political Puppets must be obtained ASAP. So, having cultural centers that cannot be replaced and multiplied during a typical game session, provides a base level of research ability that all empires have, and which will not be warped out of proportion simply by colonizing a hundred alien worlds and mass-producing labs, which is both unrealistic (IMO) and unbalancing.

The ability in itself to multiply your empire's abilities in a few years' time by colonizing alien worlds and turning them into homeworld clones is exactly what Proportions' design premise rejects. Actually attempting such in reality would, it seems to me, lead to complete bankruptcy, so Proportions is actually still quite generous in this from a realism standpoint, in that it can actually still be very worthwhile to do so. It's just not like the standard game, where it's so easy to clone your homeworld that the balance of power hinges on the ability to colonize as fast as possible.

With the change I requested to max homeworld planet value settings in 1.78, however, I might be able to re-do the way some of this works for Proportions 3.0, however. It would probably make sense that homeworlds should have an intrinsically higher value than any alien world, due to the natural habitat.

An advanced space-faring society shouldn't need large populations to create great amounts of resources anyways, as those kinds of things can be automated.

True. That's one reason I made the Proportions population effects curve level out pretty drastically after the first 30 million or so.

PvK

[ September 16, 2002, 04:37: Message edited by: PvK ]

[PvK]

Originally posted by Mylon:
The idea with proportions is that since everything goes slower, you just generate turns more often. I can easily run through 100 turns before I really get anywhere in the game. This is probably a problem when playing against other players, though, as 100 turns will likely take 100 days.

Yep!

BTW a fan (sorry, I forget which one - Dogscoff? Rollo?) made a utility which auto-runs turns. You could probably get a jump start into a developed game position in Proportions by using this to get to turn 100, or 500, or ... one of the neat things about Proportions (IMO) is that it should extend the interesting play time to several hundred turns (or more) because of the delayed research and development. Especially on High research costs, but even Low or Medium are pretty gradual.

PvK

[Mylon]

Yes, I appreciate the idea of not being able to make homeworld clones easily, but I would like to see making such clones actually possible to some degree. The value improvement plants are in themselves terraforming facilities that adjust gravity, temperature, some air conditions, ect. (and there have been plenty of times when my homeworld has been generated with "unpleasant" conditions).

Still, 500 turns for a race that specializes in fast building (hardy industrialist + 20% space yard rate) is a tad much. 50 turns (5 years!) may seem too short for the description, but that is plenty long building time for one facility and I really doubt that anyone could realistically build more than 3 on any particular planet. And this also makes upgrading them actually possible, if we ever get the ability to upgrade one facility at a time and more levels are added.

[Mylon]

Originally posted by PvK:
You're right - SE4 just doesn't handle complex upgrades. It's really only designed for upgrading to something of about the same cost, like in the standard game.

Your idea is a good one, although I don't know if SE4 would allow upgrades both ways (city->metropolis and city_1->city_2).

PvK

Well part if the idea is that you would remove the upgrades between cities totally and adjust the costs somewhat (Metropolises would take forever to build if they were actually 100kT! Technically they're only 65 if you build a minor city first, and you get some amount of production for some of the building time), though you _could_ design the cities in a heirarchy of minor city level 1 > minor city level 2 > minor city level 3 > metropolis level 1, ect, but I don't think it's worth the bother. Especially not since there won't be any way to upgrade to minor city level 3 if you have "cities" uncovered.

From my experience, it seems that metropolises are the most useful infrastructure simply because they're really the only facility that produces a decent amount for the investment. The cities between minor and metropolis merely add build time to getting to metropolis, thus lowering their value.

[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by PvK:
Hmm. I wonder if it is possible to fool SE4's "one construction fac per planet" limit by upgrading from a fac without a SY to one that has one... that could be an interesting effect.
PvK

That's exactly how Suicide Junkie created his "spaceyard enhancers" (or something like that) in P&N... there's a thread about it around here somewhere, including a sample addition to facilities.txt...

[nitey]

Oleg,

>> That of course create error Messages. If you get latest Version, try to load one of my races (pequeninos, soul hunters or nostropholo). If you still have a problem, let know. <<

Your races work fine. It's just all the standard races apparently need to be recreated and saved. BTW, I'm using the latest Version 2.4.2 of proportions.

Pvk,

Thanks for your replies. I suspect that the problem is exactly what you mentioned, since the EEE and ABBIDON start on Gas Giants, they probably end up with more starting facilities compared to everyone else thus more research, etc. points. I'm not totally sure I'll mess with the colony ships, as I want to give your method a bit more time to grow on me, but I sure appreciate you telling me how I can go and adjust it if I want.

Thanks!

[oleg]

Gas Giant races have bigger homeworlds only if you use "poor homeworld value" - rock/ice start on small while gas still have medium. Normal or good homeworld start gives equal homeworlds to all races.

[Graeme Dice]

If all you care about is the infrastructure, sure.

That's all that matters for producing materials and constructing ships. Such things would require next to no manpower for an advanced civilization like those in SE4.

Of course, on the homeworld, there is the advantage that it is the correct atmosphere (composition, pressure, and weather), radiation levels, bioshpere, gravity, and temperature. Overcoming these is part of the massive challenge of creating a productive colony on an alien planet.

All of which are mostly irrelevant to automated processors, which already exist on ships, and are far more effective than a facility that covers half a continent.

A Proportions Cultural center represents more than simply industry and infrastructure, however. It represents the culture, society, history, art, drama, economy, as well as the environment that makes it possible to run and sustain large-scale production, reasearch, and so on so that the planet actually contributes to an empire rather than sucking massive resources just to keep it in existence.

A planet only requires large amounts of resources from another planet if it cannot produce enough food to feed the population. We're talking about completely untouched planets, with material resources similar to Earth. There's no real reason to send anything to the planet past the initial colony set up materials unless the planet is extremely poor.

The ability in itself to multiply your empire's abilities in a few years' time by colonizing alien worlds and turning them into homeworld clones is exactly what Proportions' design premise rejects. Actually attempting such in reality would, it seems to me, lead to complete bankruptcy, so Proportions is actually still quite generous in this from a realism standpoint, in that it can actually still be very worthwhile to do so.

If creating colonies that increase production by an order of magnitude bankrupts the empire, then Britain would have been bankrupted a hundred times over by now. Colonies represent untapped resources, and beyond a very short setup period would easily produce more than they take at the tech levels reached in SE4.

With the change I requested to max homeworld planet value settings in 1.78, however, I might be able to re-do the way some of this works for Proportions 3.0, however. It would probably make sense that homeworlds should have an intrinsically higher value than any alien world, due to the natural habitat.

Only for things that actually require population, like research, and creating more population.