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Geoff the Medio
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#1 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I had this discussion on IRC a few months ago, and thought it was worth keeping for future techs consideration...

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[21:43] <Gumi_Designer> is there an artificial environment theory, which orbital farming and deepspace stations might go under?
[21:43] <Gumi_Designer> or rather theories about the latter
[21:44] <GeofftheMedio_> actually, a number of techs that I've initially labelled as theories might be better changed to applications...
[21:45] <GeofftheMedio_> in particular, to reduce the average number of theories from 15 or so to 10 or 12 per category would be good
[21:45] <GeofftheMedio_> and I think there's enough candidates for this change in most categories
[21:46] <Gumi_Designer> there is certainly a raeson for simplification
[21:46] <GeofftheMedio_> but as to your specific question...
[21:47] <GeofftheMedio_> Orbital Farming does depend on Environmental Encapsulation
[21:48] <Gumi_Designer> just as an orbital conony might. Deep Space things on the other hand would require a level of self restoration, true artificial environments
[21:48] <Gumi_Designer> a level of self matnence that doesn't need the regular shiping of goods from a planet is orbits
[21:49] <GeofftheMedio_> there's no much deep-space autonomous (from planets) stuff in the tree now
[21:51] <Gumi_Designer> I'm thinking somthing kind of like places we would send population once a planet gets too full, or perhaps an asteroid colony
[21:53] <Gumi_Designer> has this been talked about yet?
[21:53] <GeofftheMedio_> probably such a tech would go under Construction.  Perhaps it would depend on Infrastructure Ecology and Orbital Construction
[21:54] <GeofftheMedio_> or perhaps, after Orbital Construction, a system-wide construction theory could be put...
[21:54] <Gumi_Designer> somthing like encapsulation theories under Ecology?
[21:54] <GeofftheMedio_> re: talked about: not specifically that I recall... maybe there's something in the construction category thread, but that's a bit old
[21:56] <Gumi_Designer> I'm not sure if this next idea may be a little off the wall but here I go...
[21:56] <GeofftheMedio_> wait a sec
[21:56] <Gumi_Designer> *paused*
[21:57] <Gumi_Designer> sorry, I'm a little anxious
[21:57] <GeofftheMedio_> ... why?
[21:58] <Gumi_Designer> I like to think of stuff and learn what others think of my ideas
[21:58] <GeofftheMedio_> Environmental Encapsulation and Infrastructure Ecology could lead to a Self-Sufficient Ecology tech
[21:58] <GeofftheMedio_> Self-Suf Eco could be combined with Orbital Construction to allow Autonomous Orbitals
[22:00] <GeofftheMedio_> Orbital Construction could lead to something about construction throughough a star system...  (ie. not just in orbit)
[22:00] <GeofftheMedio_> not sure what to call it
[22:00] <Gumi_Designer> Free Floating Colony
[22:00] <Gumi_Designer> FFC?
[22:00] <Gumi_Designer> It's a floater
[22:00] <GeofftheMedio_> need something techier sounding
[22:01] <Gumi_Designer> *nods*
[22:01] <GeofftheMedio_> big sciency sounding words like Autonomous and Encapsulation, etc
[22:03] <Gumi_Designer> Artificial Environmental Station I'm going to grab a thesourus
[22:04] <GeofftheMedio_> well, it's not environment-specific... it's just construction throughout a system
[22:04] <Gumi_Designer> finding antonim to orbital
[22:06] <GeofftheMedio_> Extraorbital Construction?
[22:06] <GeofftheMedio_> arguably asteroid mining should depend on that
[22:07] <GeofftheMedio_> anyway, depending on Extraorbital Construction and Autonomous Orbitals, one could have an application called Free-Floating Colony
[22:08] <Gumi_Designer> I belive that races that do not emedialy depend on an environment being breathable (barren or inferno maybe) would find it easyier to reaserch this stuff, considering they just ahve to figure out how to sheild themselves from radiation (if they don't like it)
[22:10] <GeofftheMedio_> rather than worrying about ease of research or whether a race can research a particular tech, I'm thinking we'll focus more on whether the race can use the tech, or whether a particular resource required to use a tech is available
[22:11] <Gumi_Designer> yeah, I started thinking a little too far ahead
[22:12] <GeofftheMedio_> anyhoo... in order to add a few more theories, we need to pare down the ones that are there already... converting a few to applications
[22:12] <GeofftheMedio_> unfortunately, some categories (production) are more applied in general than others (Learning)
[22:13] <Gumi_Designer> are all the current theories written on the cart you gave me?
[22:13] <Gumi_Designer> or is there a larger oene
[22:13] <GeofftheMedio_> the cart?
[22:14] <Gumi_Designer> sorry, chart, the one with industrial farming
[22:14] <GeofftheMedio_> noo... that's just the growth category
[22:15] <Gumi_Designer> thought so
[22:16] <GeofftheMedio_> there's about 72 theories at the moment
[22:16] <GeofftheMedio_> across 5 categories
[22:17] <Gumi_Designer> the learning area of reasearch will fill with many applications as ships are thought of.
[22:17] <GeofftheMedio_> but I'd like to reduce that to 50 or 60
[22:17] <GeofftheMedio_> I suspect we'll add a categeory or three for ships stuff
[22:17] <GeofftheMedio_> currently it's all planets / infrastructure
[22:17] <Gumi_Designer> are the current theories written down anywhere I can look so that I may help more effecianetly
[22:18] <GeofftheMedio_> the research screen in the game is the best way, or in techs.txt (which is with the game code, game binaries, or on the wiki)
[22:19] <Gumi_Designer> I guess I'll take a look at the research screen sometime
[22:24] <Gumi_Designer> what theory is artificial planet under
[22:24] <GeofftheMedio_> there's an artificial heavenly bodies theory in construction, thougoh it doesn't presently lead to anything
[22:25] <GeofftheMedio_> I don't know if there is an "artificial planet" tech yet
[22:27] <GeofftheMedio_> I don't see one
[22:28] <Gumi_Designer> somthing that bothered me in MoO II was, if you discovered a system that had no planet for a colony then you would never build there even after learning to build planets. But do you think a clony ship, or perhaps an Extraorbital-device could be moved to the system and change a gas-giant or asteroid belt into a planet?
[22:28] <GeofftheMedio_> presumably
[22:29] <GeofftheMedio_> there's no terraforming techs yet, but that would be a late-game version of them

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