Dormant necrovirus

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em3
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Dormant necrovirus

#1 Post by em3 »

I'm planning to create a new special that will be described in the following paragraph. I'm not asking for help in scripting. I'll figure it out, eventually - it should provide a valuable learning experience, at least. I'm more interested in general feedback.

I'm assuming a planet special can have a stealth value without affecting the stealthiness of the planet. If it's incorrect, then ignore stealth related notes.

Special: Dormant necrovirus
  • The special has some amount of stealth (requires one or two research in detection.
    If the planet has positive population of an organic species, has a reasonably high (say 1/4) chance of removing itself and spawning the special Necrovirus infestation.
    If detected, provides research boost.
Special: Necrovirus infestation
  • Sets the target population to 0.
    Each turn, each supply connected (allied) planet with organic species has an off chance (say 1/16) to spawn Necrovirus infestation special.
    Each turn, each allied ship that is in the supply range of the planet that have an organic crew have a small chance (say 1/32) of being destroyed.
    Each turn, each allied ship that is in the supply range and has an organic-line hull has a chance to be destroyed and spawn a space monster in its place (to be specified later).
    If the population of the planet drops to 0, the special removes itself and spawns Dormant necrovirus.
Other notes:
  • Infestation spread chance could be increased if infested planet is being evacuated (that's cold...).
    Spawning Necrovirus infestation can be prevented by a technology or a building (the latter would enable the player decide to let the infestation happen).
    A technology exists that can enable producing ships or buildings on planet with dormant necrovirus that can be used to add the Necrovirus infestation to other (presumably enemy) planets.
    Note that the infestation throw is rolled for each infected/uninfected planet pair, so that the more infected planets there are, the quicker the infection spreads (statistically).
    The organic hull infection might be an overkill, but could provide some more interesting events.
The fulff will come later, but I guess most of you can deduce what this is supposed to represent, right? :wink:
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

em3 wrote:If detected, provides research boost.
That could be a problem... I don't think there's any way for a special to test whether an empire can detect it. Perhaps you could construct one that checks empire detection strength against the special's own stealth level, though. If it only cares about owned planets and the owner's own stealth, then there are no detector range tests required for the equivalent result.
Each turn, each supply connected (allied) planet with organic species...
How about every (not just allied) planet within the planet's own supply range (not chaining across multiple connected planets) that is populated with the same species? Or maybe at a significantly lower rate for other species planets. 1/16 of all supply connected planets would quickly overwhelm most empires, and there's seemingly no reason not to cross between empires.

Might be better to have the chance of converting a dormant to active infestation be dependent on something like the planet population, so that it doesn't immediately convert when the planet is populated and then kill itself off. Instead, it would happen faster on planets that grow quickly.

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em3
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#3 Post by em3 »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
em3 wrote:If detected, provides research boost.
That could be a problem... I don't think there's any way for a special to test whether an empire can detect it. Perhaps you could construct one that checks empire detection strength against the special's own stealth level, though. If it only cares about owned planets and the owner's own stealth, then there are no detector range tests required for the equivalent result.
Yeah, I was thinking of something like this, actually. Can a special refer to its own stealth level or have a locally defined constant (so that the stealth level will not have to be specified in two places in the special - a redundancy which could introduce errors during balancing)?
How about every (not just allied) planet within the planet's own supply range (not chaining across multiple connected planets) that is populated with the same species? Or maybe at a significantly lower rate for other species planets. 1/16 of all supply connected planets would quickly overwhelm most empires, and there's seemingly no reason not to cross between empires.
I was planning to reduce the spread to empires that have a reasonable reason to have civilioan populations interact - which means the source empire and allies (for now). As for transfer between species - I assumed (from a KISS point of view) that differing infection rate would be too complicated.
Might be better to have the chance of converting a dormant to active infestation be dependent on something like the planet population, so that it doesn't immediately convert when the planet is populated and then kill itself off. Instead, it would happen faster on planets that grow quickly.
That is a good idea, actually.
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

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Dilvish
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#4 Post by Dilvish »

em3 wrote:As for transfer between species - I assumed (from a KISS point of view) that differing infection rate would be too complicated.
I think a different infection rate for species other than the one on the sick planet still meets the "You should be able to explain the basic rules to a reasonably clever child without difficulty." test and doesn't seem too complicated in general. It's not like you'd really be putting pressure on the user to do calculations based on the varying infection rates.

Related to & emphasizing Geoffs comments, I would suspect you'll want/need lower activation/transmission rates than you've mentioned or it would just totally devastate any empire that encounters it without previously having the cure/vaccine/whatnot. You can just tune that as you test it out, though.
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em3
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#5 Post by em3 »

Dilvish wrote:I think a different infection rate for species other than the one on the sick planet still meets the "You should be able to explain the basic rules to a reasonably clever child without difficulty." test and doesn't seem too complicated in general. It's not like you'd really be putting pressure on the user to do calculations based on the varying infection rates.
Hm, yeah, well... let's say I'll consider it. Also, FO being open source, anyone will be able to modify the special if they wish such a behaviour. I'll be frank - I'm not a fan of this suggestion. This doesn't mean I'm not open for discussion or other suggestions, though.
Related to & emphasizing Geoffs comments, I would suspect you'll want/need lower activation/transmission rates than you've mentioned or it would just totally devastate any empire that encounters it without previously having the cure/vaccine/whatnot. You can just tune that as you test it out, though.
Yeah, I was hoping I emphasized enough that the probabilities are just an initial guess (using generic words like "off chance" or "small chance" and giving numbers only in parenthesis preceded by the word "say"). The probabilities were meant to make sense in comparison (that the virus is more likely to infect a planet rather than a military vessel, for instance).

Also, my question about constants in specials still stands.
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

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Dilvish
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#6 Post by Dilvish »

em3 wrote:Can a special refer to its own stealth level or have a locally defined constant (so that the stealth level will not have to be specified in two places in the special - a redundancy which could introduce errors during balancing)?
You could certainly use a macro to define the stealth -- take a look at the macros currently used in the specials.txt file (they are defined at the end), or even more similar, the Multipliers defined at the end of species.txt. I'm not aware of any requirement that they be segregated at the end, so you might be able to define yours right next to your special (but I have tried checking up on that).

As for your question in the other thread, as long as the active special bearing the population malus is not stealthed, I wouldn't see a problem with the latent/dormant version being stealthed. The main thing (from my view) is that if the population is dying off the player has at least a reasonable indication why.
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em3
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#7 Post by em3 »

Quoting Geoff's post in another thread:
Geoff the Medio wrote:A hidden special that does nothing itself, but which reveals itself and then starts doing something is borderline. I don't see it as practically much different from a storm or monster moving into a system several turns after it is colonized. That the special actually was there for a few turns before a player became aware of it doesn't really make things any different from a random event being spawned... It's just predetermined where such an even will happen.
I'm happy you see it that way.
Geoff the Medio wrote:It might be better if, after a planet is killed off by an infection, and a special is added to represent that it could still reinfect subsequent recolonizations, that special be not hidden, so that players don't have to manually keep track of where such an infection might lurk when they already have had that information provided to them during a game.
I like this idea and will introduce it in the first post.
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

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MatGB
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#8 Post by MatGB »

One thing-it'd need a sitrep announcing the outbreak, it's not that far intot he game where clicking on all your systems regularly is just not something you're going to do.
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em3
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#9 Post by em3 »

MatGB wrote:One thing-it'd need a sitrep announcing the outbreak, it's not that far intot he game where clicking on all your systems regularly is just not something you're going to do.
That's right... and I believe that's one more reason for effects to be able to publish translatable, parametrized strings.
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

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Dilvish
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#10 Post by Dilvish »

em3 wrote:That's right... and I believe that's one more reason for effects to be able to publish translatable, parametrized strings.
How do you mean for that to be different than an Effect's current ability to publish a translatable, parameterized Sitrep?
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em3
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#11 Post by em3 »

Dilvish wrote:How do you mean for that to be different than an Effect's current ability to publish a translatable, parameterized Sitrep?
I meant something more like: "I assume the effects have translatable strings, but if they don't, here's one more reason they should." ;)
https://github.com/mmoderau
[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - Randall Munroe, title text to xkcd #556

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biza
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Re: Dormant necrovirus

#12 Post by biza »

For cure, once empire get infected it opens 'special' research tree with research 'Cure for Necrovirus on planet xy' eg. 3 x current total empire RP. So if you want to get the cure fast you need to get all you scientist to work on cure no mater how big or small your empire is.

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