FreeOrion

The purpose of this thread is to discuss mineral richness in FreeOrion. We need to decide two things: The levels and appearance of mineral richness and the effects it has.

I propose something similar to MoO2. Mineral richness has five levels: Ultra Poor, Poor, Average, Rich and Ultra Rich. Each planet has one of these 5 possible levels. We could make Rich and Ultra Rich planets very rare to increase strategic value of certain systems.

As for the effects. I see two ways we can handle this: We could give a bonus or a penalty to planets, according to mineral richness. Personally, I don't favor this way of doing things because giving a penalty might be tricky if the planets base output is only 1 unit per guy. Also, should the bonus scale with classification?

I'd favor a system restricting classification based on mineral richness. Now, before you get the water boiling, let me explain why: Because our system doesn't allow for reshuffling of colonists, minerally poor planets might end up producing less points in total than minerally rich planets. I consider this sort of unfair because the player can't do anything about that. (In MoO2 you could just put all your guys in an other field of work.) The other thing is how do we apply a bonus? Let's say the planet is not classified as mining in either primary or secondary. Then the normal output is 1. Now, how much a bonus does "ultra rich" give you?

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the moment, now I'm curious to hear others.

Can richness be depleted?

Is anyone interested in Resorse like that in Stars! ?

Can we transport the resorse to another planet?

To be honest the cost of raw materials Aluminum, Iron, Copper are trivial to the production of space craft and most other things. If anything I would say energy is far more important.

No, mineral richness can not be depleted. And mining does not lower the mass of the planet (as some guy on the old forum suggested...)

About energy, technically, from a realism point of view, you may be correct. Honestly, I don't care. Think of minerals as something you need to gather in order to build a space ship. It's probably not just iron. Maybe we're only digging through all this dirt for some very rare element. Is that important to the gameplay effect...? I think not It's just like the "food" or colonists consume isn't just steaks and potatoes.

Wasn't mineral production supposed to be seperate from industry for .2? That's the impression I got from drek's post on classifications.

If that's true, then mineral richness should only influence mining output. Poor planets would get a penalty, while rich ones get a bonus.

If we use MOO2 categories as an example:

baseline mineral output would be:

U-Poor 1
Poor 2
Normal 3
Rich 4
Ultra-Rich 5

Having mining as a primary classification would boost output by 100% above baseline, secondary would boost it by 50% of baseline.

Minerals would then "feed" production as in MOO3

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Empire Team Lead

Yes, the concept works like you said, Jbarcz1. Minerals sort of "feed" industry. I was under the impression that you need minerals only to produce ships, but maybe I was wrong there.

Cash should probably be raw energy, like in Smac, as well as a means to trade and tax.

I'd make mineral richness a bunch of common Planet Specials, just because I like to slap things into catch all catagories to make it easier to parse (both by the program and the player).

For example, we might have:

Rare Gems: +1 minerals, +1 cash
Rich Material Deposits: +2 Minerals
Poor Material Deposits: -2 Minerals
Oil Fields Aplenty: +5 cash

So my thinking is, if Planet Specials are in v.2, then so is Mineral Richness. Otherwise, hold off until we include specials in the game.

Ok, so then minerals will feed production. What role does money play? Will that feed production as well? Argh, if only we hadn't lost the econ model posts.

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Empire Team Lead

Money hasn't been decided yet, but I know already at least 5 things we can do with it. Don't worry

Possible uses for money:

Ship upkeep
Facility upkeep
Changing Primary classifications
Paying Spys to do stuff for you
Buying stuff on a some sort of galactic trade market
Buying stuff/techs/planets from other empires
Speeding up production

erm, the same basic stuff as it does in Civ and all the games that derive from it. Smac is probably the best model.

Money could also be spent on military training, raising the experience of your ship crews. Like a slider for military budget.

This is probably an added layer of complexity, but re: ship and base upkeep, wouldn't there be a mineral cost to it as well? Not very much, mind you, but they do need minerals from time to time for parts.

I think our 'minerals' is really 'raw materials,' and generally you have to process that stuff to make it useful for any technology.

I like the SMAC notion of 'energy' being the same as money.

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Raw materials like:
-oil
-gas
-wood
-iron ore
-gems
-etc

Is it really important what we call it? Credits, energy or money? A rose is a rose... We could call it Aquitaine units for all I care... (god, I hope this metaphor doesn't turn into another origami bird if you know what I mean...)

hehe, perhaps the in-game icon could be a little red, one-eyed creature. Imagine your MOO2 industry meter being filled with little aquitaine's instead of pick-axes

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Empire Team Lead