FreeOrion

As I've mentioned before, I've been thinking about how we can bring free orion into a playable state. As I see it, it basically comes down to three (maybe four) points that need to be dealt with:

AI
research
the resource model
fleets

AI
There is no single player game without an AI. A reason why in the past hardly any attempt has been made to write any AI is that it might become obsolete with every new version. Also, it may seem that writing an AI for free orion is a tremendous task; but I believe neither of these two assumptions is right.

Some aspects of the game are fixed at this point (exploration, colonisation, resource management). These parts of the AI won't need to be rewritten later.
Additionally, I don't believe much coding is necessary to achieve an adequate AI opponent. To show this, I've put together some ideas how an AI can be implemented with only six modules; some are very basic, but can be improved at any time:

Exploration
AI looks for scouts without a mission and sends them to the next unexplored star system in range

Colonisation
AI looks for colony ships without a mission, creates a list of known planets, evaluates them by some algorithm and sends the colony ship to the most promising planet

Resource Management
- food supply must always be secured; if the food stockpile <= 0 (or a small value), the AI looks for the planet that best at producing food and changes its (first or secondary) focus to farming
- global minerals must equal production; if not, focusses are changed like above
- planets that are specialised should be changed less often than those who are not
- in times of war, production should be favoured over research
- more elaborate strategies are possible, eg. if a resource is very abundant, the AI should look for colonies that can do something else instead

Research
at the begin of the turn, look if research points are unused; if so, research the cheapest tech available until no points are left

Production
this one may be the most difficult part of the AI. it needs to balance the necessity of buildings, ships, etc.

Warfare
this one is also tricky; it needs to evaluate which planets are worth attacking, which planets are weakly defended, where to place ships etc.


research tree: simplification and more apps
we need a variety of applications that have instantaneous, visible effects; every theory should have 2-3 apps; the tech tree should be smaller and clearly laid out to be beginner-friendly

resources

the food bug is making the game unplayable; since you can't export food, you can't have colonies (rev 2238)
food export should be easier; depending on technology, there should be a percental loss of max. 30% (arbitrary) (correction: there is no penalty on food export)
growth should be only dependent on health, not food (except if there is starvation)
under good conditions at the start of the game, the development of a colony should take 20 turns (arbitrary)
a good formula for growth may be the michaelis-menten kinetics [with Km = 1 / health; v is the population; Vmax is max population; have not given this much thought so far; just an idea)[/list]

fleets

should have range, so you need to build colonies to explore the galaxy; there should be outpost ships and range techs
the combat should not disappear before you click a button, so you can review the results without haste
ship design could already be implemented; better techs cost less production, but have equal or higher theoretical battle strength; ship design won't need to be changed later, only combat

Do you have suggestions how to make free orion fun to play with what we have so far? What is missing, what should be changed? Discuss.

The food bug is fixed in SVN. We just need a new version out.

I'm not sure what you mean by export should be easier. There are no losses of food... although the feeding formula often makes it hard to see where food is going.

Growth not depending on food supply soudns good, but we might want to build in some adjustment so that population doesn't grow too large when there is a stockpile but defecit of food, and then starve when the stockpile runs out. Also, how would a shortage of food affect growth or loss of population? Directly, or via health adjustments?

Ship design needs a discussion about interface before it can be implemented.

I was assuming the food bug was due to high penalties to food export. I thought I'd read about a limitation to food export somewhere. Guess I was wrong.

No, I think this is exactly what should happen. It's a player mistake to run out of food and should have the proper results. (Also, it's realistic.)

How about this really simple formula: available food / required food * pop; this would mean that the population that is not fed starves.

Of course.

Wouldn't this require the player to micromanage food production? Doesn't sound particulary fun...


The problem with that is that it makes blockades too deadly. I realize we can have instant-starve now, and add something more complicated later, but if I can get a blockade-compatible system now, I'd rather do that instead...

All the players needs to do is to watch the global food stockpile and react appropriately to shortcomings. This shouldn't be too much of a harassment.

I see the problem. Options would be:

local stockpiles, as suggested; I don't like it, it's too complex and not KISS
delayed starvation, with an arbitrary or formula-derived number of turns until full starvation
calculate how much food can be delivered, depending on the enemy fleet strength (my favourite); however, it may be hard to find a decent formula for that; a positive feature of this method is that a one-scout blockade would have no effect at all, while a large armada could starve a planet quickly