FreeOrion

The build and research costs and times are a bit large for the current pace of the game. You can reduce them by going into the text files if you'd like, but in the future, exploration in the early game will be much more interesting, and the player will have more interesting decisions to make, so there will be no need for an "auto-end-turn" (though one might be added eventually anyway, and of course it's possible that the costs and times of projects will end up being a bit lower than the ones in this version of the tech tree).

When you select "single player", there should be an option for number of AIs near the bottom of the setup window.

_________________
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Could you please give a short example of change please?
Yes, I know that, but I was wondering if the AI does anything, like exploring and attacking.
I just noticed that my mineral output after a while (I don't know if it's because of some research) just goes up, even if I build a ship or building, even if it does show a (-12,5). I don't know if it has any connection with the fact that the mineral output/turn doesn't exceed (+10).
Oh, I forgot to tell you about the "ERROR" ... when you colonize a new planet, the message says it's been colonized in the ERROR system

I assume you can get to the text files, since you were able to replace them with the ones you downloaded:
Open the text file you want to edit (for this example, techs.txt, but you can do pretty much the same thing in buildings.txt, ship_parts.txt and ship_hulls.txt)
Find the tech you want to edit, for example:

Replace the values for researchcost and researchturns with the desired values:

The AI should explore new systems, research techs, colonize planets and build warships to defend its homeworld, but I've never seen it actually attack anyone. Hopefully there will be more work done on the AI for v.4.
I'm pretty sure mineral output per turn can exceed +10. Try setting both foci on your homeworld to mining and wait a few turns for the mining meter to max out, without spending any minerals on building projects. Mining output should reach 50 (I think). What you're experiencing with your mineral stockpile increasing each turn even though the change is negative, is most likely the result of Asteroid Mines. Currently, only resources produced by regular production (meter*population/10) are used to get those values. Asteroid Mines increase the stockpile directly, through the SetOwnerMineralStockpile effect, so the change in the mineral stockpile due to Asteroid Mines is not displayed in the parentheses beside the value for the current mineral stockpile.

You may have downloaded the files before I replaced them with the files that include the updated stringtable. I just downloaded the files from the first post and determined that this issue shouldn't happen with them. What's happening is that your stringtable says "%planet% has been colonized in %system% system.", whereas Geoff recently modified the colonization sitrep to "%planet% has been colonized." and subsequently removed whatever code was calling up the name of the system to replace %system%. So now, if you still have the old sitrep message in your stringtable, you'll get ERROR instead of the name of the system. In the current version of the text files, this sitrep message has been changed to just "%planet% has been colonized." so there should be no ERROR. You can try downloading the files from the start of this thread again, or you can just change it yourself (sitrep messages are just above planet specials in the stringtable), but there are probably some other problems with the older stringtable as well, so it might just be better to download the new set of files.

_________________
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

OK, I've played with some minor adjustments, I haven't replaced the files with the newer ones because I got the taste of the game... but I now have a problem and I can't figure it why... I'm guessing it's because of a tech, nothing that I've tried seems to work. I have a lot of food production (+1.66k) but each time I want to colonize a new planet all the population dies in the first turn. Any idea about that? Oh, and the tech Indigenous Integration kills my asteroid population...

_________________
Sic transit gloria mundi

Does this happen only after you've researched a particular tech? Have you made sure the colonies are within supply range, and can get food? Are you certain that max health on those planets is greater than 20? This might be related to the problem you're having with the Indigenous Integration tech; try fixing it as I describe, then trying to colonize some planets.

I think this is because the tech Habitation Domes increases health only for planets with a population of less than 1. Once the asteroid population increased above that due to Indigenous Integration, it was no longer a target for the Habitation Domes effects groups, so health dropped to 0 and everyone died.

If you find the tech Indigenous Integration in techs.txt and add this line after "scope", it should fix the problem:



This will make the tech only work on planets that you can actually colonize, so it won't affect the Asteroid Belt or any other uninhabitable planets, so those planets' population will stay below 1, and they will continue to be targeted by the health-boosting effects group.

_________________
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Well, it seems that I can't colonize anything other than planets with 0.1 population ... and they're all withing supply range. What's interesting is that I can colonize uninhabitable planets, making outposts and then terraform them to good planets.
I haven't done anything about that tech yet, this is just an add to the previous post.
And I don't think it has anything to do with this tech because I've loaded the game and paused the research of that tech when I saw the population is dieing. So it has to be some other tech.

_________________
Sic transit gloria mundi

hmmm... after researching xenological symbiogenesis it seems to be back to normal, I mean the first good planet I tried to colonize got it right this time... I'll have to play a little more to see if it's all OK

_________________
Sic transit gloria mundi

yep, everything ok... even the asteroid problem

_________________
Sic transit gloria mundi

Do you mean that before you researched Xenological Symbiogenesis, you could't even colonize Good planets without the population dying? Because that would be a problem...

If you just couldn't colonize Poor/Hostile planets with more than 0.1 population, that would be normal, because those planets aren't inhabitable at the start of the game.

_________________
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

What I meant was that everything went normal, I had around 20 planets, good and average, I had asteroids (witch, btw, now have population of 2 so I don't have to change the file anymore even with indigenous integration researched) and even some uninhabitable planet outposts, but at one point I just couldn't colonize any planet that had the population bigger than 0.1, so I was able to colonize just uninhabitable planets and terraform them. I just did that for a lot of rounds, I don't really know how many techs I researched in that time, but there were a lot of them. I thought there was something wrong about the showed food output and made more planets food-based, but that didn't work either... I even made a black market to compensate for some food deficit but nothing happened... oh, btw, the total food/trade didn't change, was it suppose to be like that?
I tried to colonize a planet that was in a system with an AI but couldn't, again because my planet population died, not because there was a fight ... btw I cant see any enemy fleet and every time I enter one of these systems I get an combat error ... and at one time I entered one of those system with my fleet, and those planets disappeared after some combat errors. Is it no longer possible to conquer another special homeworld?

_________________
Sic transit gloria mundi

What does this mean? Did the "Colonize" button simply not appear, or did the colonists die off in a single turn, as your previous posts would suggest?

The Black Market building works the same way. Your food stockpile would have been increasing at a greater rate than the growth rate in parentheses would have indicated.

The combat auto-resolution system is/was being reworked recently. The revision you downloaded was from the midst of that, so there are likely some weird quirks with combat. The fact that you can't see any enemy fleets may be because their stealth is higher than your detection. Have you tried researching Neutron Scanner and equipping your ships with it?

_________________
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

New content files are available at the start of this thread.

I'm practically falling asleep in my seat right now, so it would be great if some cheerful volunteer would come along and tweak numbers/make sure everything's not broken, although from the looks of it, it should be pretty much OK (in terms of not being broken, due to errors in the content files, at least).

_________________
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Could you:

* Make starting conditions with smaller detection range than currently... I seem to be starting with 15+ systems in detection range.

* Give techs some minimum turns to research above 1? This can be strategically interesting, and will work around a UI quirk that makes progress bars look bad if they have only one turn minimum research time.
** Make theories require 5 or 10 turns minimum, but lots of RP for their tier in the tree
** Make applications require moderate amounts of RP, but significantly more turns to research than theories... Perhaps 10 turns at low tiers, 20 turns a mid-tiers, and 30 turns at high tiers.

* Give Resonant Moon special an icon.

Also:

* Why does tunnels special have a target population > 1 condition? I ask because it seems weird, and because it has the effect of making pre-colonization target population estimates wrong, as before colonizing, planets have 0 population, but after colonizing, they usually have at least 1 population, so have a different target population than is predicted before colonization.

I added an icons/focus directory and moved / copied focus icons there. That's probably a better place to put additional focus-specific icon files.

There's actually a specific reason for that. I'd like to have planets generally have the same detection as a ship with the latest detection equipment, since it would be a bit odd for the player to want to have ships all over the place just to keep detection up. I'd also like starting ships to have a detection of 20 so that they can see minimally stealth ships from all the way across the battle map in combat.

However, I've implemented a different solution which might be satisfactory; now all planets start with a stealth of 15 so that the player can see systems before actually seeing into them, meaning you'll still actually have to go explore most of those 15+ systems to find out what's in them.

Many techs actually already have a minimum research time greater than 1. Generally, Growth and Learning techs take longer than Construction and Industry techs, and theories take longer than applications. I'm dubious about making applications take much longer than theories - it seems like it would just be an unnecessary delay before the tech can be made available. Is there a specific reason you want Applications to have longer minimum research times?

Granted:


It's for the situations in which a colonized planet doesn't have at least 1 population. The Habitation Domes tech allows the player to create outposts with .1 population on uninhabitable planets, and if tunnels specials affected those planets, it would allow the player to create actual colonies there. I've changed it so that the effect is only active if the owner has technology that allows him to colonize the planet in question, which seems to fix the problem with pre-colonization estimates.

Here are the modified files:

_________________
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

The trouble with this is that it's now confusing when and why players can or can't see planets in systems... The systems are visible, and there are no planets in them, so players will think they know there are no planets, but then when they get closer, they will be able to see that there are in fact planets. With the base game, planets and systems (and fleets) have very low (fraction of 1 above 0) stealth, so if one is seen, so is the other, and there are no issues with visible systems that contain invisible planets.

Maybe it's not a problem, but it seems risky to me...


Granted, but there are still quite a few that have a minimum time of 1 turn, which creates the UI problems.


I'd like to set up a choice in strategies between research-heavy and production-heavy (and later some other options, like trade-heavy or exploration-heavy, when there is support for them).

If there are some tier-1 production-boosting applications available, but research-boosting applications are available on tier-2, players would initially have a choice between researching production-boosting applications and no theories, or the theories leading to research boosts but no short-term production boosts. I'm thinking these two options can be made somewhat mutually exclusive, and self-perpetuating, with research further boosting research but being impractical to get if also getting production-boosting content, and likewise for production boosting production but not research. Things could work out so that progressing through content for a researcher would involve researching (somewhat like Civ games), and progressing through content for a producer would involve making various buildings (somewhat like Master of Magic or StarCraft).

So, generally high-RP but potentially fast-researching theories makes focusing on research useful: a high-research player can research theories in a reasonable time, and get up to higher tech tiers. Early on, a low-research player can't really afford to dump lots of RP into expensive theories, as they won't research quickly enough to be useful in the short-term, even though they have a low minimum research time, and the available RP need to go towards techs that unlock production-boosting buildings.

A research-focused player could probably spare some RP to get some low-cost applications as well as high-cost theories, though, so applications could have a relatively long minimum reserach time, so that even having lots of RP doesn't let a player get lots of different applications very fast. (And even then, not focusing on production will make it difficult to produce anything those applications unlock.)

To go along with this, there could be various production enabling (like shipyards and addons) and production output (industry and minerals) boosting buildings that take lots of PP to produce.

Possibly it's only necessary to make "Learning" category techs cost lots of RP? But still, having a somewhat-longer minimum research time for applications would probably be good to prevent research-heavy players from getting all the applications very fast.

Then again, these are your content files, so you don't need to go with that plan.


Edit:

Also, why did you remove the human species, and if you're going to add the Trith, could you make up an icon, like I did (badly) for the gyisache? Without a species icon, there will be big red Xs for the Trith populatio icons and species picking droplist on the single player setup screen.