Nexus wrote:Why not defend useful native species with a fleet strong enough to be challenging in the early game? The really good specials are often defended by a powerful monster, and this situation is similar in some ways.
Acirema already get similar, and High Tech Natives get planetary defences, some other species also get some defences.
But some natives are pretty poor, and some are deliberately designed to be awful and next-to-useless (Raagh spring to mind for the latter).
However, the idea of giving more natives the Acirema ability to occasionally create guard ships is a good one worth considering, to be honest I'm not happy about the way the Acirema spawn theirs, they're on a set specific turn, it could and should be a bit more random than that.
Mat Bowles
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.
Good point about terraforming/gaia xforming. I should have thought of that, because I do a lot of it, and yeah, it does create some micromanagement for sure. It does offer the choice between improving what you have vs expanding, but it seems like it comes late enough that you've usually already expanded into the available systems on a normal sized map by the time the tech is available, unless you rush it for some reason I guess... but why would you?
Making natives use the defense focus seems to make sense, after all you'd think they have a good reason to be defensive with all these crazy warlike aliens out there.
Well, let's say you play a very minimalistic setup/map, where there's just no Natives or AIs to conquer yet, no suitable planets in reach anymore (at least, not without getting more supply, supply focus or building some outposts on smallish worlds), but you've got already some Medium/Large/Huge worlds, then terraforming could be one option to do.
Assuming you've already got Subterrenean Hab, then 300 RP is needed for Advanced Eco/Terraforming... but usually I think I'd find it perhaps better to get a broader planet tolerance via Symbiotic Bio/Xeneologics or go the Exobot & Cyborgs route...
The setups I played so far were all default amounts of planets & connections, so it's been quite rare for me outside the first few turns to not have anywhere to expand. I'll have to try some more sparse setups and see how that feels.
Still, I find it hard to justify spending the RP on the techs needed for terraforming when, like you said, I could spend that RP on techs to be able to expand, which I'll need to do sooner or later anyway. So why not do it sooner, and collect on the returns of my investment longer.
It is my intention, at some point, to make that much more of an either/or choice, you either go down the "adapt the species to the planets" route or you go down the "adapt the planets to the species" route but that's still very much in the early stages.
In the mid to late game when you've got production I do tend to go through and terraform and/or gaia transform my bigger worlds, with all the bonuses combined it's possible to have 300+ pp output on a large or huge world and that's worth the investment, but in the early stages it's simply not practical unless you've nothing to fight at all (in which case I'd want to explore further and find something to fight, but that's just me).
But yeah, the different setup options can make a massive difference to the feel of the game, sometimes in ways that are subtle at first: for example I've got so used to Low planets that I keep losing more ships than I should be on system assaults as planetary defences are lethal on High planets. On High monsters it can frequently feel that you're fighting the game itself, not your opponents, and High specials means you can't move anywhere without losing scouts to guardians of some sort or other.
Mat Bowles
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.
