FreeOrion

There's no particular thing that makes a condition only usable for scope or activation... It depends on what you want to do. Scope conditions are used to decide what to modify with an effect, and activation conditions decide whether to modify anything at all depending on the source object. The source object doesn't need to be in the scope to use it in an activation condition.

If your effectsgroup is acting only on the source object, then you could accomplish the same thing by putting a test in activation or in scope, as long as scope also contains a "Source" condition to limit the objects acted on appropriately (typically with both in an "And" condition).

Not sure what you mean by "do for source", but what you described sounds like a scope condition.

As Bigjoe5 notes, you could have an activation condition like

ContainedBy Contains Planet type = Asteroids

to make a buidling or ship only function when it's in a system that also contains asteroids.

You'd also need a scope condition, though, to actually select which objects to apply the effect to. If you wanted a different test to decide what objects to act on, then putting an activation condition like the above would make sense. For example, you might have a scope like

scope = And [
DesignHasHull "SH_EXAMPLE"
OwnedBy Source.Owner
]

to make the effect act on all ships with a particular hull that the source object's owner also owns. This scope doesn't mention asteroids, but if you paired the above scope and activations, the effect would only be applied when the source object is in a system that contains asteroids.

If you don't care what the state of the source object is, as is the case for most techs for example, and just want to select objects to act on, then omitting the activation condition and just putting your target-selection condition in scope would make sense.

eleazar,

I was using MOO2 as an example, since I have recently played it quite a lot sorry!

But as someone mentioned, having monsters change the habitability of the system (maybe even radiated == inhabitable for all, as in MOO3?) would be nice.


What I am suggesting, is to make the monsters a gaia force in the galaxy, which grows and develops at about the same rate, as empires would normally do on their own. Of course adjustable with initial settings, allowing for different skill levels of the players.

By this, I mean, if we took the krill swarm, at the beginning of the game, there would be several hives planted in the galaxy, which would develop a krill swarm usually at about the turns that the players would get their first ships out (i.e. they can kill all krill hives in the vicinity of their home unhampered).

The initial krill swarms are not extremely tough, but tough enough to give some chance to lose your first scout/destroyer. This would prevent the players going on rampage streak, destroying all hives/swarms even before tougher monsters would develop.

As the game progresses, a frontline between players and krill swarms would form, shaping the galaxy in its own unique way (i.e. there are "easy" ways, and "hard" ways around the galaxy). And players would have to choose to either go through krill-infested areas, or go head-on trying to battle well-defended planet of your enemy.

As the technology is being researched, and players' ships get stronger, that a single krill swarm is no longer a problem, the krill population should already reach critical mass needed to form large and huge krill swarms. Each posing risk to either single ships, or whole fleets. This stage allows players to nip away the outer "small krill swarm populated" solar systems, while having trouble getting deeper into the wild areas of the galaxy. It would also cause a stream of small krill engaging their planets regularly. (maybe add "krill migration" ? having to constantly fight minute amounts of krill would be extremely annoying. If, instead, there would be a regular small krill swarm migration into players' territories, that would simplify the problem). The technology level at this stage has reached an intermediate level (i.e. middle of the tech tree or so).

By the time the players' colonies have grown to the full potential, and they are about to advance into the last stages of the games, supermonsters would spawn from the current huge krill swarms. The type of supermonster would depend on the krill's diet, be that players' colonies, ships, or flora at their natural habitats.

Supermonsters can be treated as "quests", where player is set up to gain additional (possibly crucial to his plan) technology, and if the supermonster is ignored long enough, he can either degrade the wild planets to unusable levels, or go on rampage in one of the player's territories. Care should be taken when programming the logic, preventing such supermonster from outright destroying a single unlucky player. (i.e. after the colony is destroyed, retarget for a different one, on the other side of it's own habitat?).


Such monster evolution, matched to the player evolution, would result in several new aspects of the game :
1) planetary defences are commonly useful, and used
2) dynamic chokepoints, governed by monster habitats.
3) expansion dampening, smaller empires, high fleet reaction times, intense gameplay


Of course players should be rewarded for fighting monsters, and not just the supermonsters. Separate research tree, with several research techs requiring the player to capture and/or kill a certain type of space monster to progress further.

Would be nice if that tech tree would be normally hidden, and defined by the space monster properties, rather than hard-coded into the generic tech tree.


For example, with krill swarm, the monster tech tree would have a "stun net" research, which is a weapon mounter as a special on the ship, allowing it to capture a single krill swarm, if it is close to it. After the swarm is captured, you get krill swarm research, and follow up developments from it (i.e., for example, improvements to swarm missiles, improvements to bio harvesting, etc?)

In general, I agree. There need to be ways of making monsters - as well as the techs they make available - naturally become more powerful as the game progresses so that they're always a risk, but with an equivalent reward.

Not sure what you mean by "hidden". If you mean trying to keep it a secret from the player, that's pretty much not gonna happen, as all the content files are accessible. If you mean just not show up in the tech tree, I would assume the player should use the tech tree filter buttons to show just the techs he wants to see.

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

Well, that should happen perhaps in the early-to-middle game, but for practical reasons i don't think monsters must be equally significant all through the game.

In the early game monsters will probably be your main opponent. Sure there are other empires out there, but you probably don't know where they are, and it's likely you couldn't reach each other if you did, so to fill the role of "enemy" like Civ barbarians we have monsters -- reproducing and growing and striking out from in the unpopulated parts of the galaxy.

But by mid to late game, empires will have met, and any empty spaces between them will have vastly shrunk if not disappeared. There will be few uncolonized systems for monsters to grow in, and other empires will adequately fulfill the role of "enemy". Maybe we have MoO-like monster incursions from beyond, or maybe not.

I have no objection to a branch of the tech tree that makes tame monsters viable all through the game.

_________________
—• Read this First before posting Game Design Ideas!
—• Design Philosophy
—•— My Ideas, Organized —•— Get an Avatar —•— Acronyms —•—

Well, that's true too, but in the late game there can also be a very small number of extremely powerful monsters, which while no longer the main opponent, still pose a risk. In games set to high space-monster frequency, these could even come in sufficient numbers to change the course of the game, maybe causing players to team up to temporarily to defeat the threat. Probably, space monsters will become insignificant much sooner in games where the space monster frequency is set lower.

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

I've part-way made (due to the limits of the scripting in my binary) three levels of "guardian" type monsters:

Sentries
Sentinels, and
Wardens

They are supposed to be very strong relative to other monsters, but they make up for this by not staying put.
The idea is valuable specials like gaians will have a high chance of spawning them at turn 1-- which will mean we can add gaians into universe generation without throwing away for free such a valuable prize.

Eventually i'd like any spawned randomly on the map to wander around until they find a valuable special, or neutral planet, and then they stay put.


I think the number of stars per empire in a galaxy will be significant too.

_________________
—• Read this First before posting Game Design Ideas!
—• Design Philosophy
—•— My Ideas, Organized —•— Get an Avatar —•— Acronyms —•—

Why should they wander before stopping, rather than spawning right at the valuable location?

I agree with Bigjoe5, with a few additions.

The space monster significance would highly depend on player-player distance of homeworlds, and I would estimate several outcomes :

Distance
2-3 starlanes -- monsters are destroyed by about middle of the game, empires meet early.
4-5 starlanes -- supermonsters are unlikely, areas of high monster activity still remaining at mid game
6-7 starlanes -- supermonsters are abundant in wild areas of the galaxy, making most of the monster-core planets useless, and regularly raiding player's borders. Big chunks of space are unpopulated and untouched.


I dislike the idea of having huge/gaia/rich planets from the beginning, it gives unfair advantage to the players, and any guardian monster that you would put, will result in a counter-tactics that would kill it long before you would normally expect it to be killed (i.e. noob trap so to say). If it was me, I would rid of those planets completely

On the other hand, I would propose a separate way of doing it (maybe more balanced?)
Which is to introduce friendly monsters, or well, AI pets?

Such friendly monsters would do several things :
1) Improve bioharvest/habitability/mineral density of the planet over time (naturally done)
2) Improve trade (if you have research)
3) become enemies if their hatcheries are engaged or many of them are killed
4) attract hostile space monsters from wild parts of the galaxy.
5?) provide some means of defence/walking target when the player is engaged?

This would result if player having to choose between letting the friendly critter grow, and spending the resources on defending each and every frontline with wild galaxies, or to kill the critters and loose out on the benefits. As the rest of monsters, friendly critters grow, albeit, slowly, in power/benefits.


All in all, it would be nice to see a full ecosystem in the universe.


As for the research, since I was considering a possibility of a range of space monsters, having a full tech tree for each one of them, and every step of it's evolution, would be quite problematic. If the game would automatically reveal part of the tree, relevant to the monster you have just met, it would simplify handling.

Mostly because i forgot i could auto-destruct any on turn 1 that are randomly spawned in the wrong place.


Do you really know enough about the bonuses of our Gaians and the strength of the defenders to say that with any confidence? Practically nothing is the same as MoO, and most things are quite different.

_________________
—• Read this First before posting Game Design Ideas!
—• Design Philosophy
—•— My Ideas, Organized —•— Get an Avatar —•— Acronyms —•—

I hope to add a way to specify where monsters should spawn, so for long term planning, assume you can specify that and won't need to delete ones that spawn in the wrong place.

I'm considering adding a file, space_monster_spawn_fleets.txt, which would contain entries like this:
This entry is similar to the entries in starting_fleets.txt, except for the heading and the last three fields related to spawning monster fleets at the start of a game:
* spawnrate indicates the relative chance of spawning this monster fleet.
* spawnlimit indicates the maximum number of this fleet that can be spawned.
* location indicates where the fleet can be spawned. It won't appear at locations that don't match the condition.

Exactly how location and spawnrate and the universe-setting are used in combination to decide what monsters to spawn where, I'm not sure yet, but various reasonable options could be set up using this input information.

Does this seem reasonable, or is there some other very useful / important functionality that should be added?

I can't think of anything to add, assuming that "spawnlimit" can be an equation, like: NumberOfStarsInGalaxy / 50 (i'm sure that's not the correct form, but you get the idea.)

It looks like it will do everything i can think of reasonably wanting to do.

Since you don't want to risk infinite loops, it might be simpler if "spawnrate" were a whole number.

_________________
—• Read this First before posting Game Design Ideas!
—• Design Philosophy
—•— My Ideas, Organized —•— Get an Avatar —•— Acronyms —•—

That's not really what spawnlimit was intended to do.

If you wanted to have about systems / 50 monsters, that means there's about a 2% chance of each system having the monster fleet, so you'd need to set the spawnrate accordingly.

The point of spawnlimit was to be able to put an absolute limit on the number of times a particular monster fleet could appear. This would be useful, for example, if a monster was supposed to be unique, which would be set up by specifying spawnlimit = 1

Having something like NumberOfStars referencable in spawnrate or spawnlimit probably isn't going to happen. The rate is just a single real-value number (whole numbers and decimals), and the spawnlimit is an integer.

However, as noted above, spawnrate will, in conjunction with the universe life frequency setting, determine a rate of spawning monsters. That means that for every system or object, a monster has some chance of being spawned. So, over 100 or so systems, approximately that fraction of systems will have a monster spawn in it, plus or minus some random variation. Given that, there's no obvious need to have a NumberOfStars referencable value, is there?

I can't immediately think of anything else that might be necessary. I think that probably covers everything we might want to do with monsters at universe generation.

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

Well i can't call it "very useful." Just an idea.

I suppose it all comes down to how exactly the "life frequency", "spawnrate", and "location" work together. What happens when the location isn't valid? Will you have to increase the spawnrate of a monster that only appears in rarer locations to get it to appear at all?

Though overall i'm more interested in seeing a relatively unpredictable mix of monsters (and specials, etc.) than a reliably fine-tuned ratio, so i'm unlikely to inconvenienced. I was just trying to think of stuff people might plausibly want.


What do you think about using a similar system for specials?

_________________
—• Read this First before posting Game Design Ideas!
—• Design Philosophy
—•— My Ideas, Organized —•— Get an Avatar —•— Acronyms —•—