FreeOrion

I've done a search of forum posts, read the post about changes in 0.3.15, read the post about the upcoming (but not yet implemented) changes in the Quick Play Guide to reflect the 0.3.15 changes, as well as the discussion about changing the design docs to reflect 0.3.15 and what will be happening in 0.4.

One comment, one suggestion and one question:

In this version, it seems like I spend most of my time clicking the turn button waiting dozens of turns for research to kick over and hundreds of turns to create a few colony ships. So much time, in fact, that once I've explored my local area, I don't even send my scout ships back to refuel - just have them wait 10 turns and then move on to the next system.

Granted this game is nowhere near release, but the pace must be faster in order to keep people interested. I think that I understand the reasons for removing the secondary focus, but I suggest (and I will repost this paragraph under the Sugggestions thread) that every colony have some farming, some mining, some research and some industry. These minimums could be modified up or down by just about anything, but shouldn't be negated completely except by several items working together. Many systems may not be very sucessful on their own, or contribute a lot to the empire, but most colonies on terran worlds should be able to at least survive and grow slowly on their own.

My question is with regards to Resource Supply Lines in 0.3.15. I've played for a few hundred turns in several games and my Resource Supply lines are still the same as they were when I started in each game. I did not have this same issue in 0.3.14 (or was it 0.3.13 - I'm not sure). Can Resource Supply Lines be increased in 0.3.15 and if so, what is necessary to do so and approximately how many turns should it take?

---- I'm partially answering my own question. It looks like researching Orbital Construction is absolutely key to increasing Resource Supply lines. This has had a secondary effect of decreasing the number of times that I click the turn button with nothing happening. Still not enough though. Please feel free to add any other items that contribute to increasing Resource Supply lines.

If you colonize planets with a suitable species such that the planet is "good" quality (not necessarily terran for all species), then they should have a stable / slowly growing population if left on farming focus. There might be exceptions if a special is present that reduces farming or health. It's not necessary for a planet to have any industry, research or mining output to be stable, though.

If you mean that most planets should be able to feed themslves even when not on farming focus, then I disagree. If planets can feed themselves when not focusing on farming, then there's no point in having food or a farming focus at all, since almost any planets can feed itself while still producing significant amounts of other resources.


Note that you can modify the game content files in FreeOrion/default/ to add more things or increase the bonuses of things that improve resource supply line length. Feel free to post such modifications and suggestions in the Content Creation forum.

All the tech/building descriptions in v.3.15 are, IMO, very clear. Look for ones that say "increases resource supply length of colonies by 1" or something like that. Techs should include Orbital Construction, Controlled Gravity Wells and Galactic Resource Management. Buildings should include Imperial Palace and Megalith.

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

From my perspective, having a minimal amount of everything (except in extreme situations like asteroids, Gas giants or a research outpost on a desolate world) allows a world to do almost everything, but slowly. Producing enough food for my planet to get to population 3 instead of population 15 or 25 should be possible. What a Farming Focus allows is the possibility to EXPORT food to other worlds.

Look at the world we live on, for example. We farm, we mine, we produce, we do research. Now look at individual countries or regions of our world, separated by oceans and expand that as an example as it pertains to planets and space. The midwest of the USA is "the breadbasket of the world", but it does contain some mining, some construction, some research. Due to Silicon Valley, Northern California is a high research area, but it does contain some farming, some mining, and some construction. The same can be said for areas of the world known for mining, construction, and energy production. For me, FOCUS comes into play in the area of EXPORT. By Focussing a planet, you determine what that planet will export to the rest of the empire.

From a game standpoint, my perspective is that isolated star systems should be able to grow and produce, even if they do so more slowly than the empire as a whole. Interconnected systems can share resources to allow the empire to expand and advance more quickly.



I'm sorry that I wasn't more clear in my first posting. My comment "Please feel free to add any other items that contribute to increasing Resource Supply lines." was not with regards to adding features to the game, but rather to reply to my forum posting with other applicable techs/buildings that you had already added to the game. Thus enabling fairly inexperienced players the ability to better playtest the game.

I mean no offense to anyone who has contributed to the tech tree, but I find it very difficult to extract information from it. Both versions (list and graphic) are cumbersome in their own way. The blocking windows that can't be closed/reduced are annoying. Perhaps a search function that would allow you to search for a key word like "Resource Supply Line"?

I knew what you meant. My point was that if you felt there wasn't enough in the game to do something (eg. increase supply line length), you could add things that do that. Discussion of what exists now to do so is a separate issue.


The list isn't meant to be useful. It's just there as a proof of concept and a backup in case someone wants to build without the graphviz dependency that the tree requires.


The navigation and encyclopedia panels (top middle and top right) can be resized and moved. The shape of the controls panel can be changed (tall and thin or wide and short). If you're using a reasonably large monitor (over 1024x768) then the windows shouldn't be so big as to signficantly impede viewing the tree.

Also, the tree can be zoomed with the mousewheel.


That would be nice, if someone would like to add it.

What I did to start expanding pretty fast was build a custom ship with an Outpost Module ( Growth -> Evironmental Encapsulation -> Habitation Domes, which unlocks the Outpost Module) on it. Granted, it's only 0.1 pop, but if you build the hull with only the outpost module on it, it builds really fast.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

Mnementh

I've been playing 0.3.16

I found the techs which said they increased supply lines actually increased construction by 20 points. I couldn't increase the length of my supply lines. I also found that a lot of turns passed without much happening, but I think I was researching the wrong kind of techs - I only found out about this project a few days ago.

There are two kinds of supply line: Fleet supply lines are shown by moving dotted lines, and only provide fuel to ships. Resource supply lines - which this thread is about - are the solid lines, and the length of those is determined from planets' construction meters; 20 points extends the line by one starlane jump.


The problem is that FreeOrion isn't yet a finished balanced game. We haven't spent time making sure there's always something interesting going on.

Thanks

The planet information sidebar shows Fleet supply line length then, but doesn't explicitly show Resource supply line length. I think it should.
The technology description should probably say that the technology increases construction as I assume this also has other effects. (I am very unclear on construction)

When I said that not much happened for a lot of turns, I wasn't criticising, just stating the fact. I think it is useful for me to give first impressions, since I am not going to be very good at much else yet! those of you who understand the program back-to-front probably won't realise when something isn't 'intuitive' any more (After you change things enough times you may have forgotton that the game doesn't actually explicity show it!). I expect once I have played the game more I will know what I can do at the start that is useful - rather than reseaching lots of theories and no applications - as I did!