FreeOrion

Seems pretty good.

So if there is a Mechanical/Robotic Growth focus, it will be necessary for a robotic planet to be in range of a planet with this focus in order to be able to queue population growth/grow population via focus?

I prefer queuing population growth, so that you don't have to worry about switching the focus back when you're done, but in this case, it's not clear how to provide an advantage for being in range of a better growth planet. Perhaps unlocks cheaper projects that produce the same amount of population?

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This is all still brain-stormy, but if we used queued growth i was thinking that:
* robotic growth focus would increase target population, but at least some planet types would have a positive target population without any growth foci.
* but no growth occurs unless "built" in the production queue.

Cons:
Population growth requires production resources
Population growth requires requires player action

Pros:
Population growth may be extremely rapid with a big industry network behind it.

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Oh yeah, that does make sense, and is sort of the obvious solution, now that I think of it.
This seems more like a con of the system itself, rather than of having robotic species in your empire. It might be a nice idea to somehow provide the player with a large-scale tool to indicate what default amount of PP to devote to increasing robotic population per planet.

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Perhaps robots would grow infrastructure instead of population? This being interesting would require a bunch of content that works in amounts dependent on infrastructure instead of population, which has been suggested...

I think it would be overall more confusing if you managed PP prioritization in the current queue, and in some other place.

However a feature to allow easy enqueueing of multiple items of the same kind would help with here and in general.


Can you elaborate?

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It was discussed here: viewtopic.php?p=51850#p51850

I'd eventually like there to be a dichotomy between Growth and Construction, possibly based on the distinction between resource bonuses based on population and bonuses based on infrastructure (perhaps with only the greater of a pair of bonuses being used for each resource-boosting tech). In general, I'd like both strategies to be possible with all species, though perhaps robots could be an exception to this. There could also be a group of species complementing this by not being able to have significant infrastructure growth, but being forced into the population side.

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I'm wary of having different species use different stats that are increased to accomplish the same thing. What exactly would be accomplished besides longer tech/building rules & descriptions?
And if robots or whatever relied only on infrastructure to boost all production what would be the point of the population meter?




If its going to be a dichotomy, it needs to be more than two alternate tech paths that accomplish exactly/nearly the same thing. For instance, maybe mining and industry are primarily boosted via infrastructure, and science & trade/influence are primarily multiplied via population. "Growth" could be equally multiplied by both. There you have a strategic choice of which path to pursue.

Not that i'm particularly promoting the idea, but if we want to use construction instead of population to multiply some resources, this seems like a better way.

I'm not yet convinced that using population & construction as a production multiplier really does anything useful. Having all manner of different boosts some multiplied by this, others multiplied by that, some additive, etc. leads to a jumble of not easily comparable tech/buildings. I would not complain if all resource production boosts were in the form of "+ X resources per population unit"

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The original idea was to have various bits of content use one of the population or infrastructure meters for determining the output / production / activation / whatever, not just to make a distinction between species. That said, having some species predominantly use just one of infrastructure of population would integrate that distinction better.

Rather than "production is based on infrastructure" and "research is based on population" exclusively, the idea would be that there are growth-focused or infrastructure-focused paths through the game content. Some species might be better with one or the other, but there would also be buildings and techs and focus settings that depend more so on one or the other. Things like planetary shields and defense would likely be (mostly) infrastructure-linked, rather than population. Planetary bombardment would affect mostly infrastructure or mostly population, depending whether bombs or biological attacks (for organic-type species) are used. Being able to attack and damage a planet's infrastructure without killing its population would be useful for keeping the species on the planet not annoyed at an empire doing the attacking. Being able to destroy the population without damaging the infrastructure would make capturing and resettling planets useful.

In general, there are lots of scifi-context cases where having a distinction between lots of population and lots of (vaguely defined) "level of development" on a planet is useful, so I'm inclined to think having different ways of measuring these features would be useful for story purposes. The distinction could also be made useful in providing multiple (large-scale?) strategic options and independent mid-term strategic goals.

This i like!

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I'm having trouble with the descriptive term for silicon-based, and/or crystalline life-forms. I.E. the term parallel to "Organic", "Robotic", etc.

Some ideas i'm not convinced are right:

Silicoid (Familiar, because it is a MoO species name)
Siliconic
Lithic (actual word: "Of the nature of or relating to stone")

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Crystalline? Crystalloid?

"Silicoid" were a single species, not a broad class of species, weren't they?

Pro: actual words people know.
Con: implies only the immobile giant jewels type lifeform

In MoO yes.
Though the term is not limited to MoO. It finds some general use for silicon based life. Sword of the Stars used the term for instance.

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Covering any variation of life based on silicon chemistry under the same term as shiny crystal-bodied life may be difficult. Is there really a need for "silicon-based life" that isn't basically a chunk of shiny crystal? If it's just "silicon-based" in name only, and otherwise looks like organic, it might as well be organic...?

The following is not real science, nor what i think is even likely, but somewhat common ideas that are out there in science fiction:

Silicon is the most popular alternate chemistry for life in science fiction. And what makes it useful for our purposes, silicon-based creatures are depicted frequently with a series of common traits, that they are more or less recognizable.

Siliconic life is frequently depicted as living in extremely high temperatures (such as star trek's Tholians), and might even thrive in/near lava as our Egassem and Ugmorrs do. Besides crystalline critters, it could include any sort of "mineral" based life form. If you want life somewhere without water or an atmosphere, silicon is generally invoked.

EDIT: to put it another way, Siliconic life is what (besides robots) could plausible live on our barren radiated & inferno planets. And it would be boring if they were all stationary crystals.

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