Streamlined Colonization

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Krikkitone
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#61 Post by Krikkitone »

Hihoo wrote: A right mouseclick on an uncolonized planet could offer "send new colony ship" which could switch you to the nearest most appropriate shipyard to make enqueuing more streamlined or -

While enqueuing a new colony-ship, an option to dedicate this ship to the colonization of some specific planet would be nice. It could then colonize this planet on arrival or even (try to) fly there on its own.

Ah yes , and a "I want colonize all empty planets NOW" - button is a must in my view :)
Cheers,

A colony base would still be a better option

Right mouseclick on uncolonized planet "send colony ship" you would have to specify which world you wanted to send a colony ship FROM. (from ALL of your planets ?with a shipyard?.. and you have to consider their species and their productivity)

Right mouseclick on uncolonized planet (in supply range) "build colony" all you have to select is which species you want to use.


"colonize all empty planets now" is a problem of the system whereby planets=power (each planet has a certain contribution that it will make to your empire, and as the game goes on the contribution of each planet becomes more equal [Terraforming, etc.])

Perhaps some tech that allowed the largest planet in the system to get benefits from uncolonized planets
ie "remote mining".. benefits to largest industry focused planet in the system based on number(and size) of uncolonized planets in the system.

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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#62 Post by yandonman »

Krikkitone wrote:Right mouseclick on uncolonized planet "send colony ship" you would have to specify which world you wanted to send a colony ship FROM. (from ALL of your planets ?with a shipyard?.. and you have to consider their species and their productivity)
My thoughts on this would be that one only has to pick the species of already built colony ships, and it would select the closest colony ship (of selected species) by default.
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Vezzra
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#63 Post by Vezzra »

Ok, the topic keeps coming up, and we haven't come to a decision yet. Many of the ideas thrown around seem much too complicated to me, so here is one very simple thing we can try, that probably wouldn't require any code changes at all and could be done just by adapting the content scripts:

Throw out the colony ship completely, just keep the outpost ship/ship part, and make buildings that can convert an outpost into a colony. There would have to be one building for each species that can colonize, and upon completion would set the species of the planet and population to 1 (maybe also make more advanced versions that set the pop to 3).

The location condition for these buildings could be set to "have a colony of your empire with this species supply connected to the outpost you want to convert". That would require the player to establish supply connection to outposts he want to turn into colonies, which would be very effective in restricting a "colonizing rush" strategy as a side effect. If we feel that might be too much of a restriction in low planet galaxies, we can still keep the colony ship/ship part as a very expensive alternative that allows you to deploy a colony even beyond your supply range, but that would only be some last resort, not the thing you would do usually.

Obvious advantages: No need to decide at the time you enqueue a colony ship which kind of species it has to be, thereby getting rid of the whole "where do I have a colony with the required species with a shipyard" mess and all the micromanagement that ensues as a consequence. You just need to build outpost ships and send them to the planets you want to colonize without having to worry which species the outpost ship has and consequently where to build it. Once the outpost is created, just build the right building, and you're set.

You can (and probably will with that approach) even hold a reserve of some outpost ships, which isn't a feasable strategy now.

Nice side effect: The whole "can colonize, cannot build ships" mess with species goes away. You can have species that cannot build ships, but still can colonize. Just make a "outpost converter" building for that species.

That shouldn't even be too hard to script, so I suggest before we try something more fancy, we go ahead give that approach a try. The by far most work will be required by adapting the AI to these changed mechanics, although, without the need to decide where to build a colony ship to get the right species, things should get simpler for the AI too - Dilvish?

Thoughts, comments?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#64 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Vezzra wrote:Thoughts, comments?
I'd keep the colony ship as a standard method of colonizing, but add the building as an unlockable alternative... Or at least unlockable for use on outposts outside systems that already have the species... It could be available for in-system colonization from the start or very early.

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Dilvish
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#65 Post by Dilvish »

Vezzra wrote:The by far most work will be required by adapting the AI to these changed mechanics, although, without the need to decide where to build a colony ship to get the right species, things should get simpler for the AI too - Dilvish?
Geoff the Medio wrote:I'd keep the colony ship as a standard method of colonizing, but add the building as an unlockable alternative... Or at least unlockable for use on outposts outside systems that already have the species... It could be available for in-system colonization from the start or very early.
My initial reaction is that I like the idea a lot. The next couple of months are going to be a significant RL crunch for me though; I can't really make an estimate of how long it would take me to think through a plan for AI adjustments, let alone actually implement them. Geoff's suggestion of making this an alternative would let the AI continue as it is until I get time to make the adjustments. It does sound to me like this path would have some strategic advantages (a lower cost ship being at risk during transit), but it doesn't seem so drastic as to be a significant problem if there is a (potentially long) lag before the AI can use it.

I particularly like Geoff's suggestion to have this unlocked for in-system colonization from the outset-- it wasn't so long ago that I gave the AI the ability to build colony bases but I still don't have any good planning in place for them to ensure the base won't be completed while in the middle of an attack, and it would be convenient to not have to worry about losing the colony base in that event.
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MatGB
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#66 Post by MatGB »

I definitely like the idea of converting outposts into colonies in some way (especially given the AIs obsession with outposts and the annoyance involved in it for xenophobes concentration camping everything), but suspect keeping the existing colony ship mechanic is something to have for awhile.

It would also make Artifical Planets more viable without the major messing I was thinking of doing, which I'd still like to do but again other concerns have my time for a bit currently (that card game I mentioned is a runaway breakout success and I'm a bit swamped).
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Vezzra
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#67 Post by Vezzra »

Geoff the Medio wrote:I'd keep the colony ship as a standard method of colonizing, but add the building as an unlockable alternative...
Why? The mechanic is obviously flawed (at least for the kind of game we try to make), I fail to see the appeal of colony ships (in their current form).

IIRC there are two main arguments that have been made in their favor:

1) They make colonization risky, you have to ensure protection for your colony ships if they have to pass through potentially dangerous areas to get to their target planet. Requiring supply connection that can potentially be blocked isn't really the same.

2) At the start of the game, when each new colony is a major endeavour (and thus happens accordingly rarely), requiring the player to have to select and enqueue the right building on top of what he has to do now (build a ship, send it to the target planet, press the "Colonize" button) actually makes the whole process a bit more tedious instead of simplifying things (because at that stage, when you only have one species and your home world, the whole micromanagement problems of the later game aren't an issue yet).

ad 1): That also applies to the outpost ships in my suggestion (that's one reason why I'm not sold on the idea of being able to build a colony building on an supply connected empty planet). You still have to send a ship there that can be attacked and has to be protected. And you have to maintain supply connection if you want to turn that outpost into a colony.

ad 2): True, there's a point here, two things that come to mind regarding this issue:

1) It's just a few more clicks for an operation that, as has been pointed out, doesn't happen very frequently at that stage. So I see that only as a very minor annoyance, certainly something negligible compared to the headache colonizing becomes later on. Optimizing the number of clicks for a certain action/operation makes sense for something you have to do very often/frequently, in that case even one or two more clicks can make a really huge difference. Which, in our case here, actually becomes an issue once you reach a stage when you start with more large scale colonizing, but by then the issues caused by the colony ship method far outweigh the bit additional hassle of having to enqueue the colony building (otherwise we wouldn't have this discussion).

2) And even if we think the additional action of having to enqueue the colony building is that annoying, I'd rather put in a bit automation here: Implement the possibility to create the outpost and enqueue the colony building in one step. That would result in the exact same amount of work for the player as with the colony ship method, with the important difference that the player gets to choose the right species at the time the outpost is settled on the planet, not when the colony ship gets enqueued.

Having played other 4X space games I can tell from experience that the other way round, the way the current suggested patches are working, has its own issues. Just press the "Colonize" button of an empty planet and letting the code automatically selecting the "best" colony ship isn't as simple and straightforward as it might seem at a first glance, as you yourself have been pointing out in earlier posts. Determining the best species is probably the easiest thing (and even that isn't as simple as it might seem), but then, if there are several colony ships available with the desired species, which to pick? The one which will arrive at the target planet fastest? The nearest (not necessarily the same!)? The one with the highest capacity? Player preferences will be different regarding these decisions, not to speak of the impact of the current strategic situation.

There might be another colony ship for the desired species being completed just a few turns later, that is far nearer to the target planet and would be there much faster. To make things worse, after the completion of the second colony ship I order colonization of a planet that needs the same species, but is very near to my first colony ship (which is now traveling all across my empire to the first target planet). Now two colony ships are travelling all around the galaxy to reach their target planets, while each one could be at their targets much faster if their targets were swapped (if only the second ship would have been available a few turns earlier). I'm not making things up here, that has happened to me, several times. All it takes is an empire big enough, too much colonizing going on at once, too much colony ships to keep track of and just relying on an automated procedure.

I might build different kind of colony ships for different requirements. Extra fast to reach a strategically important planet far away from the shipyards of the required species; armed and armoured ones for colonization in danger/war zones; etc. Once I do that, I can't use the automation at all, because it's prone to pick the wrong ships.

I might want to escort specific colony ships, which brings us to a discussion that already came up in another thread: What to do if the colony ship the automatic procedure selected is in a fleet? Split it off, or order the entire fleet to the target planet? In that discussion both preferences have already been expressed, and there isn't a right answer to that question anyway, because it depends on the situation. What to do if a fleet contains several colony ships?

I guess I could find even more problems, but I think you get the point. I see a plethora of problems and issues with the current colony ship approach (even with the proposed patches, they can only alleviate the mess to a certain degree), and no real advantage. So I'm really interested what you think are the distinct advantages of colony ships that makes it worth to keep them :D

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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#68 Post by Vezzra »

Dilvish wrote:The next couple of months are going to be a significant RL crunch for me though; I can't really make an estimate of how long it would take me to think through a plan for AI adjustments, let alone actually implement them. Geoff's suggestion of making this an alternative would let the AI continue as it is until I get time to make the adjustments. It does sound to me like this path would have some strategic advantages (a lower cost ship being at risk during transit), but it doesn't seem so drastic as to be a significant problem if there is a (potentially long) lag before the AI can use it.
That's just a technical issue concerning the implementation of the idea without breaking the AI for a prolonged amount of time. I've no problem to keep both mechanics for a while so we don't end up with a broken AI for too long.

But the goal should be to get rid of colony ships, at least as the standard method of colonization. I'd like to try the throw them out completely approach at some point and see how our play testers are going to do with that (especially on low planet settings). If it doesn't work out, we can re-add colony ships as an expensive alternative means to colonize planets outside supply range easily enough.

But I definitely don't want to keep colony ships as the standard way of colonizing. Honestly, mid and late game colonizing is one of the most annoying things in FO currently (IMO).

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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#69 Post by Vezzra »

MatGB wrote:but suspect keeping the existing colony ship mechanic is something to have for awhile.
Because of the reasons Dilvish expressed (to avoid having a broken AI for an indefinite amount of time, that is, until RL allows him the get around to adapt it)? Or are there other reasons why you think we shoud keep colony ships?

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Sloth
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#70 Post by Sloth »

Vezzra wrote:
MatGB wrote:but suspect keeping the existing colony ship mechanic is something to have for awhile.
Because of the reasons Dilvish expressed (to avoid having a broken AI for an indefinite amount of time, that is, until RL allows him the get around to adapt it)? Or are there other reasons why you think we shoud keep colony ships?
I'm also very much in favor of keeping colony ships and i can give two reasons to keep them:

1. Starting the game with a colony ship is a good start into the game. It drops the player right into the action of conquering space. Don't underestimate the first impressions of a new player!

2. Without colony ships you wouldn't be able to settle outside your supply lines. While most players don't do that anyway, it's nice to have the option to be bolt and start a far away offspring of your empire.
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#71 Post by Dilvish »

Sloth wrote:I'm also very much in favor of keeping colony ships and i can give two reasons to keep them:
1. Starting the game with a colony ship is a good start into the game. It drops the player right into the action of conquering space. Don't underestimate the first impressions of a new player!
2. Without colony ships you wouldn't be able to settle outside your supply lines. While most players don't do that anyway, it's nice to have the option to be bolt and start a far away offspring of your empire.
Those both sound like good reasons to me, particularly the first.

Regarding the second, I do quite often colonize planets that are currently outside supply lines but that will be joined once the planet is actually colonized and its supply meter has time to grow. Sometimes, like for a large planet I plan to put to research, I may even colonize a little farther out, needing to wait for new tech or another colony/outpost before the colony will be supply connected. But just because I do those things now doesn't mean I'm strongly wedded to being able to continue doing them. Although I would like to. :D
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#72 Post by mileser »

My own thoughts on this:

Well, another option is to have colony ships, but have a more advanced tech that allows the production of a building: a Colony Command Center (just like the Stargate Control Center I once proposed) that will allow players to no longer have to build colony ships for in-supply planets in order to colonize a planet. This would help with the micromanagement problems of colonizing later in the game, which I too find tedious.

If it seems too easy to have just the one command center, make it where you have to have a command center for each species that you wish to colonize with.
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#73 Post by MatGB »

mileser wrote: Well, another option is to have colony ships, but have a more advanced tech that allows the production of a building: a Colony Command Center (just like the Stargate Control Center I once proposed) that will allow players to no longer have to build colony ships for in-supply planets in order to colonize a planet. This would help with the micromanagement problems of colonizing later in the game, which I too find tedious.

If it seems too easy to have just the one command center, make it where you have to have a command center for each species that you wish to colonize with.
I quite like this idea. I like it quite a lot (the stargate command centre is on my list of things to do fairly early when I go back to scripting, FWIW, I really like the idea and it keeps the lovely new artwork useful while massively reducing micromanagement).

You could implement a colony centre in multiple different ways, and if you right click a planet it'll give you the option of different planets/species with command centres in supply to populate it from.

You could even put a restriction on it, planets making a new colony must be on a special focus, or on growth focus, or similar.
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#74 Post by em3 »

What if a planet is supply-connected to two empires? Which one gets dibs if both start building the colony on the same turn?
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Re: Streamlined Colonization

#75 Post by MatGB »

Geoff has mentioned trying to make sure that supply doesn't overlap, if that's done in a way that endpoints of supply are half way down a starlane, then most of the problem is solved, the only remaining clash would be allies that don't block supply, if that's the intention.
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