Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and Gaia

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Oberlus
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Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and Gaia

#1 Post by Oberlus »

As numbers are the key to victory I tend to prioritize growth techs: more colonisable planets (so good with flat bonuses), more population on colonised planets (good with pop-dependant bonuses) and in the end more PPs and RPs and curves grow exponentially. Lets steamroll.

At some point of the growth tech tree, it strikes me as odd when I find hostile and poor planets with same pop cap for same size, specially when the hostile planet is right on the opposite side of the environment's wheel.

Also, the huge numbers of populations you can get with just researching, without terraforming, seems a bit out of control. In the end you end up forgetting about the whole environments plot of the species. Every planet is good for every race. Sure, you can and must prioritise the better ones, but that's for the first colony in a system (for a negligible optimisation of PP/RP production during the next few turns), but after that you just place outposts/colonies on every planet just ASAP. IMO that spoils that spicy (and strategic thinking) that the game gets from having different environments. I think Hostile planets should keep being relatively hostile, and certainly worse than Poor planets, during early and mid parts of Growth tech (i.e., until Terraforming).

Moreover, the good pop. caps you can get researching makes me think I'm losing time when I do Terraforming. In fact, I only do it because of my suspension of disbelief (I wan't my species to live more confortably), 'cause I know I'm delaying my military production and getting less outcome than just focusing on producing colonies, warships and troopers. I'd like to see terraforming as a more advantageous "building", or just remove it at all and consider that the different Growth techs are in fact forms of terraforming. But they are not, since the environment of the planet remains the same.

Nevertheless, removing Terraforming as a building would reduce some unwanted micromanagement (I saw some players complaining about current implementation of Terraforming) and make this part more in line with the "no no-brainer building micromanagement" phillosophy of FO, that I really love (more fun in less time and with less CTS).




So I got a few thoughts about all this, not nearly as a packed suggestion but a bunch possibilities:

1) Turn Terraforming tech into a more expensive one that lend every owned planet a nerfed form of the Gaia special, which will change environment (at most to good, adequate for exobots) at a speed tied to the infraestructure of the planet. Maximum speed should be similar to current minimum turns for Terraforming building, with minimum infraestructure it should be really slow. Thus, for maximum infraestructrure it would take around 10 turns, double for next down level of planetary infraestructure, etc. To follow the same phillosophy, Gaia Transformation would also be a more expensive tech that enables an automatic, slow improvement for every planet that is already good environment (it's the same kind of no-brainer building).

2) Nerf Cyborgs tech a bit, from the current "Hostile planet: (Tiny +2) (Small +4) (Medium +6) (Large +8) (Huge +10)." to just "(Tiny +1) (Small +2) (Medium +3) (Large +4) (Huge +5)", effectively halving its growth bonus. Bonus to ground troops would be the same, or even better if found to be neccessary to balance the tech.

3) Nerf Xenological Hybridization in the same line as Cyborgs: half the increase for Hostile planets from +2*SIZE to +1*SIZE (increase to Poor ones remain the same).

4) Maybe also nerf Xenological Genetics, so that Poor planet only gets the same increase as Hostile. I.e.:
From this:
- Adequate or Poor planet: (Tiny +2) (Small +4) (Medium +6) (Large +8) (Huge +10)
- Hostile planet: (Tiny +1) (Small +2) (Medium +3) (Large +4) (Huge +5)
To this:
- Adequate planet: (Tiny +2) (Small +4) (Medium +6) (Large +8) (Huge +10)
- Poor or Hostile planet: (Tiny +1) (Small +2) (Medium +3) (Large +4) (Huge +5)

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

This is another case where I think techs should unlock policy cards that the player can chooaw a limited set of, rather than giving an immediate permanent bonus upon completion.

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#3 Post by Vezzra »

@Oberlus: the growth techs and terraforming are one of the many things that are in need of a major revision. There has already been quite some discussion about this, and it's on the todo list. But as with everything else on that legendary list, the question is when we will get to it... ;)

@Geoff:
Geoff the Medio wrote:This is another case where I think techs should unlock policy cards that the player can chooaw a limited set of, rather than giving an immediate permanent bonus upon completion.
I've to admit I'm not familiar with this policy card concept. Can you elaborate? Just a brief, basic explanation to get an idea what it is about.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#4 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Vezzra wrote:I've to admit I'm not familiar with this policy card concept. Can you elaborate? Just a brief, basic explanation to get an idea what it is about.
Every empire can pick two:
- +1 target population on all planets
- Terraforming times / costs reduced 50%
- +4 target population on the 5 planets closest to the capital
- +4 target population on the homeworld of a species for that species
- +1 target population per native populated planet within an empire's supply network
- -5 target population on planets with a species other than that on an empire's homeworld

Some are better than others, some are situational, some have negative effects, each is unlocked by a tech or sime other condition. Empires can choose some number to activate and can change which are actives at some times or at some influence cost. Negative effects are OK since cards are optional to use. Many varied cards are unlocked but each only takes efect while chosen.

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#5 Post by Oberlus »

The current focus system for individual planets could be seen as a form of policy cards where maximum number of cards selected is 1 and the available cards does not depend on researched techs but on planet's characteristics.

A problem with the policy cards system for techs is that it's not implemented?
___________

Getting back to my interest of fine-tunning the current system:

I acknowledge this is low priority and already in the todo list of the developers.

I've checked techs.txt to see every tech affecting planet's populations. Assuming you have all the techs and specials (or self-sustaining), you get this:

Hostile: Value + planet_size*12
Poor: Value + planet_size*11
Adequate: Value + planet_size*10
Good: Value + planet_size*8
Gaia: Value + planet_size*11

Prior to the previous calculation, Value is already affected by the environment, as in
Hostile: Value = Value - 4*Size

I've tried to find the initial Value for a planet depending on size browsing the code in the GitHub, but I've failed.

Could anyone tell me where to look for that or just the answer if it is already on your mind?

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#6 Post by dbenage-cx »

Initial Value for a planet depending on size
These values are an int based enum universe/Enums.h, where each iteration increases by 1.
(Edit: I may have misread, if asking about initial population from size, try default/species/common/population.macros)
techs.txt
Hoping you are referring to default/scripting/techs, otherwise you are looking at code more than a year old.
Some related effects are in species as well (iirc), phototrophic are probably handicapped in that regard.
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#7 Post by Dilvish »

Oberlus wrote:A problem with the policy cards system for techs is that it's not implemented?
That's just a task, not a problem. To get the functionality up and running without having to make a new UI interface for them we could do them as techs. I think it would take fairly little extra work to implement Policies as a new category of techs, say costing a single RP and then taking one (or maybe two) turns to come into effect. With probably just a new Empire method and corresponding Effect for taking a tech away from an empire, we could implement several Policy lines where there could only be one active Policy within each line, using Specials applied to the Empire Capital so a tech could figure out if it is newly chosen and needs to go kill the other techs in its line and apply its special to the Capital so it is flagged as active. Allowing 2 Policies per line, or overall, or whatever, would get a bit more tricky, but still not be too bad I think.

That at least would be a not-super-difficult way for someone to experiment with Policies; perhaps we'd rather do the extra work of a dedicated interface and framework for them, though.

Oberlus wrote:I've tried to find the initial Value for a planet depending on size browsing the code in the GitHub, but I've failed.
The initial value is zero. I think the calculations should all be specified in the species/common/population.macros, and some searching here on the forums can turn up some explanation/discussion of it.
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#8 Post by Oberlus »

Thank you, dbenage-cx and Dilvish.

Certainly I agree with that implementing Policy Cards is not problem but a task. And for what Dilvish says in previos post it seems an easy one (just needs thorough thinking for a good design, as many other tasks).

I'll keep searching in the forums and the code for better understanding of all this (and hopefully learn some Python).

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#9 Post by L29Ah »

I don't feel like doing messy micro-management re planetary environments and terraforming when i have 100+ planets and busy with crucial battles against the remaining powerhouses. Not much an issue for a single player masturbator i guess tho.
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#10 Post by Oberlus »

L29Ah wrote:I don't feel like doing messy micro-management re planetary environments and terraforming when i have 100+ planets and busy with crucial battles against the remaining powerhouses. Not much an issue for a single player masturbator i guess tho.
As a single player masturbator, I can tell you that it is boring too. Only do it if I have 4k+ PPs and I'm already pwning. So it is cosmetical.

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#11 Post by Vezzra »

Geoff the Medio wrote:Negative effects are OK since cards are optional to use.
But what's the point of negative effects in that case? Why would a player ever activate a policy card with negative effects?

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#12 Post by Vezzra »

Dilvish wrote:That at least would be a not-super-difficult way for someone to experiment with Policies; perhaps we'd rather do the extra work of a dedicated interface and framework for them, though.
If we're going to implement this policy card idea for real, I'd definitely prefer the dedicated interface and framework approach.

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#13 Post by The Silent One »

Vezzra wrote:Why would a player ever activate a policy card with negative effects?
They're combined with some positive effect.
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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#14 Post by Vezzra »

The Silent One wrote:
Vezzra wrote:Why would a player ever activate a policy card with negative effects?
They're combined with some positive effect.
Ah, ok... so, if I understand correctly, a policy card can/will contain several effects, some of which could be negative. It's just that Geoff's simple example above looks like each item in that list represents one policy card, in this case the negative one would make no sense, so that got me confused.

The concept is similar to the planetary focus settings, but on the empire level. "Empire focus settings", so to speak. Definitely an interesting idea.

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Re: Cyborgs, Xeno. Hybridization/Genetics, Terraforming and

#15 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Vezzra wrote:...the negative one would make no sense, so that got me confused.
It's not meant to be "negative". It's meant to be situationally useful... say you want to get rid of most of the species in your empire.
The concept is similar to the planetary focus settings, but on the empire level.
A bit, but notably not limited to just one.

In Civ 6, they are categorized, and there are a few ways to get more of each category of card, so you might have 3 economic, 2 diplomatic, 1 military, and 2 wildcard slots into which cards can be placed. Whether or how to do that is an open question.

This is different from SMAC social engineering, in that one could and must only pick one of the options for each category, but similar in that each choice could have benefits and penalties, but different in that most choices in SMAC would have multiple bonuses and penalties, whereas the Civ 6 cards are generally only a single effect each.

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