Amendments to the Buildings List

Creation, discussion, and balancing of game content such as techs, buildings, ship parts.

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Craigy
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Re: Amendments to the Buildings List

#16 Post by Craigy »

Geoff the Medio wrote:I think you're thinking of Forbidden City. Imperial Palace is a generic term, not specific to a single country / culture.
Yes, you are right. I didn't realize that it was not specific to the Forbidden City, but it seems to have originated as an eastern term.

Is it better to use names that people might associate with objects in real life, or more exotic phrases? I'm fine with keeping the original name, but what is the general rule here?

OK, so the building doesn't change the homeworld special, but it could designate the 'capitol' planet?

I'm not trying to cause problems here, I just want to help solve them. :)

Does anyone disagree that buildings should bend game rules instead of being simply meter modifiers?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Amendments to the Buildings List

#17 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Craigy wrote:Is it better to use names that people might associate with objects in real life, or more exotic phrases? I'm fine with keeping the original name, but what is the general rule here?
There is no rule established, but generally we should avoid silly-sounding names. (A similar rule applied to race names might also help.)
OK, so the building doesn't change the homeworld special, but it could designate the 'capitol' planet?
Geoff the Medio wrote:...the [Imperial Palace] building could perhaps change the empire's capitol, once appropriate effects are implemented.

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Josh
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Please take this into account as well

#18 Post by Josh »

Production oriented buildings:
Autofactory
Miniature Sun
Hyperspatial Dam
Artificial Black Hole


Mining oriented buildings (notably disproportionate to production):
Asteroid mine
Heavy mining processor


Research oriented buildings:
Theorem Prover
Autolabs
Collective Thought Net
Enclave of Void
Psicorp
and at least two hybrid research centers...


Ship Support buildings:
Shipyard (builds them)
Lighthouse (feeds them)
Observatory (watches for them)


Trade oriented buildings:
Space elevator
Deep Green
Commercial union


Weaponized buildings:
Bioterror (Projector and Lab)
Economic Sinkhole


There are no purist farming buildings (unless health is considered the same as farming) many health altering buildings, numerous hybrids of varying intent and purpose, and at least two population centers.

Please take this into account as well whenever creating, modifying or removing content.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Amendments to the Buildings List

#19 Post by Geoff the Medio »

A few suggestions about building design:

A way to make two similar buildings more strategically distinct would be to make one building require the planet's owner empire to know a particular tech for the building to function, while the other building functions regardless of known techs. This would make capturing one of the buildings much more useful than the other, and would make producing such buildings much more or less strategically risky at a vulnerable location.

Similarly, buildings can (or will be able to) specify what happens when a planet a building is on is captured. The building can either be destroyed, captured and controlled by the new owner of the planet, or perhaps more interesting things like the building remaining owned and operated by the original owner, with suitable effects. This would strategically work similarly to the tech-requirement above.

These features might also be changeable with refinement techs that alter already available or produced buildings.

Similarly, a building (or tech) might be distinguished from others by its available refinements.

I've also previously mentioned high-production-cost buildings that boost production-related things, and high-research-cost techs that boost research, and having little of one that boosts the other. This promotes specialization of player strategies into one of research or production.

A possible type of building is one that unlocks other building types or ship parts or hulls.

There could be a building that can only be built in black hole systems which allows ships with a particular type of hull or part to get some bonus. The empire would have to control one or more of this type of building (in an black hole system) to get the bonus on appropriately-equipped ships. This acts a bit like a player-controlled strategic resource.

Things like asteroid mine buildings might be more interesting near the start of the game, when the player has lots of time and few planets and systems to keep track of. Later in the game, it would be boring to have to build a lot of asteroid mines everywhere. As such, we could have a mid-game tech that acts like an asteroid mine in all systems where asteroid mines could have been built previously. Thus, the player can build a mine to keep themselves busy and get a strategic bonus near the start of the game, but doesn't need to do so later.

We can fairly easily add terraforming buildings right now. These would be a very simple implementation that would likely just change one planet type into another. They could be chained, allowing successively built buildings to move a planet several type steps.

We could have buildings that don't function in certain startype systems, or which don't function in systems that have a particular special, or that only function in certain systems (such as the black hole example above).

There should be some buildings that have negative and positive meter-altering effects. Techs can't be turned on and off or placed in a particular location, but buildings can, meaning buildings can have more mixed effects without creating frustration. This applies even more so after we add a way to scrap existing buildings.

More interestingly, if most buildings have significant negative effects that project out over an area that cover several systems, interesting things can result. We can do things like making most production-boosting buildings have large negative penalties to farming or other resource meters. This would effectively make it impossible to produce any food in any systems near your production-boosting buildings. This would mean you'd have to ship in food from other systems to keep the production planets alive. This would mean you've have to guard resource supply lines that connect your industrial / production empire sub-section and your farming planets, or perhaps your farming subsection, research subsection, etc.

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Josh
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Amending the list

#20 Post by Josh »

Okay, I'd just like to point out that I have long since changed my opinion about lighthouses; I was confused as to their purpose, I thought they were meant to be detection building of some sort that made the content of starlanes visible or something like that. Their purpose is more logistics oriented, and could stand to be renamed to reflect that better.
We can fairly easily add terraforming buildings right now... ...They could be chained, allowing successively built buildings to move a planet several type steps.
Good. Making up new content is such a simple matter, but it will likely forestall improvements on current content.

For example:
The detection and visibility system is coming up, I was wondering if the Void Enclave Temple could be an oracle structure instead. This oracle would allow a new detection rule, or change an existing stealth rule. It seems to fit logically into the tech tree scheme, and a specialized detection building might make more sense than a research building.

The Caducean Institute seems a like a hospital of some sort. What if it also protected against biological weapons instead of just increased health? Or merge with the genebank and have the genebank do that instead of a research bonus. This will make it a partly defensive building that fosters population growth and protects population from direct attack, rather than having (yet another) vague, ambiguous research building.

Or, renaming the building so they are less specific. I'm all for uniqueness and originality, but some of them sound too unique or wonderful, like you're only supposed build one of each :? . (Living Planet, Orbital Gardens, Deep Green, Commercial Union, etc.)
We can do things like making most production-boosting buildings have large negative penalties to farming or other resource meters.

and

There should be some buildings that have negative and positive meter-altering effects.
Like paradise planet does? Okay, but please don't make them too common, that will frustrate other buildings, such as buildings filling in niches within a grand strategy.
More interestingly, if most buildings have significant negative effects that project out over an area that cover several systems, interesting things can result.
I'd like to see how that pans out, because economic sinkhole is the only one that seems to do that.
This acts a bit like a player-controlled strategic resource.
Could this extend to planet specials as strategic resources? (example: only being able to build heavy mining processors on inferno worlds or worlds that are tectonically stable)
I agree with buildings being designed such that they fit into a greater strategic scheme rather being the strategy all by themselves. The choice between building up or building out is not just cliche in 4X strategy, but sort of self defeating when you have an infrastructure meter, so buildings generally should fill in niches within grand strategies in FO the way I see it.

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Tortanick
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Re: Amending the list

#21 Post by Tortanick »

Josh wrote:
More interestingly, if most buildings have significant negative effects that project out over an area that cover several systems, interesting things can result.
I'd like to see how that pans out, because economic sinkhole is the only one that seems to do that.
If you see a building that doesn't feel free to propose a downside, btw I've allready proposed one for Psicorps (they try to upsurp you, their effectiveness is based on balance testing) and Bioterror (its political dynamite if anyone proves you have it). Paradise planet could remove all the planets farming, mining, production and research in favour of creating happiness to surrounding colonies; the more work you've sacrificed the more happiness created. Interstellar Lighthouse could increase visibility to something huge.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Amending the list

#22 Post by Krikkitone »

Well I see 2 types of "buildings" that are valid in the FO paradigm

1. Trade offs (ie Paradise Planet) one planet suffers for an area based benefit or vice versa [one planet suffering for its own benefit=Focus, one area suffering for its own benefit=Government Policy]

2. Strategic 'game breakers', Shipyards, Starports/Supply Depots/Lighthouse [Boost Logistics... extending range only needs to be done in a few locations], Scanners, Stargates (eventually one would be in each system... but the World that it is on would be important)


Some things are probably better classed as "policies" than buildings

Bioweapons/Psicorps/Alien"camps"/(Terraforming*)

All those are things that you would want to affect your whole Empire.

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