Proportions - Sphere worlds impossible?

[Mylon]

When playing Proportions, I finally managed to build a sphere world placement generator (the research for it took forever) and just to test things, I tried activating it. During the next turn, I got the message that there was not enough supply to power the component. Granted, there was not enough plating and cabling in the sector (Proportions makes sphereworlds require an astounding 500 cable units and 1000 plating units), but the component also requires 300,000 supply. Well, bases have an unlimited supply, right?

I think there might be a maximum amount of supply for each individual ship (including bases) and this 300,000 number exceeds that.

As a sidenote, in the text for the ringworld and sphereworld components the first says 100,000kt required and the second says 1 MT (and 2 MT for plating) required. This should be expressed as Gt (gigatons), as 1,000 kt = 1 Mt, so 1,000,000kt = 1Gt.

If sphere worlds are impossible given these settings, is it possible to alter the files somehow so I can build sphere worlds without restarting the game?

[Atrocities]

If you use the cheats, not that any one here does, then it is not impossible.

But ya, from what you have posted, OMG

[Mylon]

Also, do mothballed plates/cables count for the purpose of construction? I can't remember.

[Fyron]

Mylon said:
If sphere worlds are impossible given these settings, is it possible to alter the files somehow so I can build sphere worlds without restarting the game?

Sure. Just copy over the data from the stock game for those components and overwrite the relevant components in Proportions. Transfer the generator, cabling, and plating components only. You might want to create a backup copy of the Proportions Components.txt file before doing this...

[Mylon]

I tried editing the components file directly to reduce the required supplies by a factor of 1,000, but when I attempted to load my save game I was told that my data files were of a different Version than those used in the save. I had to restore the backup I made to continue playing.

Editing the components.txt file doesn't work - I'd imagine I'd have to edit the save game file itself somehow.

[Fyron]

Did you start the game in Simultaneous Movement mode? If so, you will need to load the savegame as "Host" and process a turn. Then, the changed data files will be allowed.

[Mylon]

I'll try that. Thanks!

[PvK]

I think this is a bug in Proportions which was recently pointed out to me by another player. It's the supply requirement - it doesn't work even if you do have the supplies, so the supply requirement needs to be set to zero.

PvK

[Mylon]

Well I changed the supply requirements to 30 and 10 for the sphere and ringworld placement generators. So, when I tried activating my new sphereworld placement generator, it worked. Well, the surprising part about it working was that I only (Only!) had about 600-700 components in the sector, as opposed to the required 1,500. I would dare say that Proportions really breaks the limits inside the game itself.

I _think_ the magic number is on supplies 65,536, which would be 2^16, an unsigned (or positive-only) integer. That's the limit resource converters use and possibly applies to supplies as well. Yet it also baffles me because I would think the supply requirement would "wrap around" and end up as some number less than 65,536. From what I can figure, the supply available is 65,536, but the supply required is interpreted as a different size variable (and thus can exceed that).

As for the materials... I think that might be a signed variable of some kind and 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 causes some wrap-around. Thus, when the game does a check it sees, "Well, you have 50,000 and you need 45,000, so proceed." I think it would be so much easier to just make the components cost a huge amount and require 1 for the ringworld and 5-10 for the sphereworld. However, the net cost should not be the same -- I calculated (neglecting resource requirements) that I could have the components for the sphere world in a mere 180 turns by using a spaceyard on each component ship and having them build each other exponentially. So rather than decreasing the amount by 100 and increasing the cost by 100, increase the cost by only 2 to 5, so it takes about 50 turns to make one component.

[PvK]

Oh, interesting additional information, and good suggestions for alterations! Thanks!

I wonder what the limit is on the materials requirements.

Supply requirement should probably be zero anyway since one generally needs a base which by SE4 definition has infinite supplies.

I'd also be interested to see your save game file or hear about what it took to get to the point where you were actually building these things!

PvK