FreeOrion

Bioweapons are totally irrelevant here, guys, come on. You know better.

I could care less whether we call it commerce or trade or economics, but lets' go easy on the accusations of bias, eh? Your point is quite valid and doesn't need the geographic distinction to back it up.

-Aq

_________________
Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

By bias, I meant a human-centric bias more so than than a western/capitalist bias... Pretty much all human economic systems do involve some sort of commerce.

Realistically, we might end up with every race practicing "commerce" in the normal sense anyway, given the intention to keep the basic functionality of all races roughly similar, and the possible impracticality of having techs that cover all possible economic systems...


I was thinking of bioweapons in terms of engineered plagues and such, which would primarily affect a planet's growth and health, or defences against such plagues. In that contexts, bioweaponry could fit into a growth/health/farming category... At least the defensive side of the issue, anyway.


My only objections are to the terms StateCraft and Development, which are unclear in meaning to me. The former could be fixed by calling it "Diplomacy" (if that's what is meant, and I get the impression it is). The latter is never going to be clear in how it differs from other things that might be called "development".


Agreed.

StateCraft (atleast to me) could literaly be translated "the Craft of running a state" and would include both Forign Policy aka "Diplomacy" and purely internal things like "opress the people" "insight Holy war" "assasinate rivals". It also includes all Spying type things, basicaly anything involving the goverment or the state.

Development might be a tricky word and we should avoid any other casual references to it so as not to cause confusion, to me Development is what your doing when your not making/preparing for a war. Incressing your Resorce base, expanding Infastructure, Building cool new Buildings. Basicaly all that "Builder" stuff that going to give you the long term Production Capacity with which to crush your oponent with in the late game.

_________________
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

I felt "Sociology & Diplomacy" covered those aspects pretty well. "StateCraft" sounds like mostly domestic politics issues to me, and isn't broad enough to cover all the interesting things that would fall under "Sociology" (in my mind).

Isn't that covered by "Mining" or "Materials" or "Resources"?
Could you elaborate? "Infrastructure" is just as vague as "Development".
How does that translate into a set of techs in its own category, rather than techs in the various categories that unlock certain types of building, that you would then build to get advantages related to the category in question...?
Isn't that what the "Production" or "Industry" category is for?

And, now that I think about it, re: Impaler's...

Certainly not all research is done Academically, and not all resources are used as Materials...

So, my latest:
Industry & Resources
Farming & Biology
Sociology & Diplomacy
Trade & Economics
Information & Research

(Somebody scowl at me if this is getting to removed from "commenting" on Aq's comments)

The word "Biology" is a bad idea, I think. It could apply to too many other game concepts, aside from farming, health, and population. The word Research seems redundant, since it applies to any category: maybe "Secrets" or "Learning?" Materials is better than "Resources" since we often refer to all of the items produced by planets as resources.

The Trade category is going to be incredibly light compared to the others. There's just one economic meter. How many times can we say: "this meter +1"? I continue to advocate squeezing infrastructure (Construction meter) into the category.

I hope for shorter category names. I've got a couple of places I'd like stick the category names on the UI (on the meter screen, and in a right hand side bar I'm drawing up)....both places are short on UI real estate, at as I imagine them.

I think Biology is a good word to use, its broader then simply Farming (which it seems Drek dosent like) the word Growth gives you an Indication as to what your going to get.

Geoff: I dont see why you feel the word StateCraft is limited in that way, as far as I know it has a broad conotation (can anyone else back me up on this?). Were you alraedy familiar with the word and gave it a differnt conotation or are you just now learning of it and give it this conotation from "feel"?

As for Development/Industry
Aquitaine's post

lead me to belive Industry is about fueling industry and pumping out stuff (space ships) Russian Style. Development on the other hand is about getting the ABILITY to pump that stuff out. This needs a bit more elaboration in any case.

Also feel we should avoid using "Reserch" in one of the catagories as ALL of this stuff is colectivly called Research. Perhaps "Science & Information" A possible one name aproatch

Biology
Industry
Statecraft
Development OR Economics
Sciences

_________________
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

A reminder about what Aq said a page ago:


Don't give him too much to sort through, and don't force him to close the thread before any stragglers get a chance to comment.

Such as?


Your suggestions are more and equally applicable to any category, respectively...

Presumably there would be some research-related bonuses / buildings / whatnot in the research category, thus making the name sensible...


Reasonable point. I'm inclined to think the general term is ill-chosen, but it's functional and established, and "Materials" is fine.


There can be more in this categeory that just improving meters directly. To keep things interesting, the trade side of "Trade & Economics" would involve actually trading things between your planets (like civ-esque resources) or with other races in order to get the benfits. Also, it would augment your ability to get more benefit out of those trades than the empire or planet you're trading with... And could also extend to your ability to force your way into foreign markets against the will of their rulers, and to use established trade routes to establish social, cultural and other non-military control over others' planets.

I'm more worried about "this meter +1" syndrome for the farming / health type category...


IMO it should be "squeezed" into Sociology.


Hmm... Perhaps we can set things up so the two parts of the name are sort of a "Major & Minor" pairing, so that if you need a shortened name, you can just use the Major Part, but when there's extra space, the whole thing can be shown.

Alternatively, you can use abbrev.


I've heard the word before, but it's not common enough, IMO, to assume that people will interpret its scope as broadly as you'd like. It's not a huge stretch for it to cover both domestic and international politics, but it doesn't really seem to cover the full meaning and scope of sociology. Saying "Sociology & Diplomacy" is just clearer to me.


I don't see the distinction between the ability and actually doing it, from a tech side of things. The only possibility put forwards that I recall is for increases to the construction meter, which isn't necessary or sufficient for a category in of itself, and isn't related to economics in any important way.

Is it really necessary to have "Construction" or "Development" or somesuch? There are the various other categories to chose from, in order to focus your construction and development in specific areas. Having a category, or a significant number of techs in a conjoined category, seems redundant to me.


Well, the idea was that some of the stuff in "Research" would improve your ability to research... so... there is some sense in calling it "Research".

That said, it is somewhat ambiguous... But "Science" isn't any better on that front, and not all research is "Science" either...

Maybe just "Information"? It's not terribly helpful to described what the category would contain, but we'll have to compromise, I guess...

If we want to go with the one-word category titles,

Growth
Industry
Sociology
Economics
Information (?)

Edit: I started writing this before Tyreth posted... and in our (my) defence, Aq did ask for more comments after the 7-page closing threat.

Ack, my mistake, I hadn't seen that post. Sorry.

Um...Yes that the point, Science is a Reserch Catagory

I think Information is even more ambiguous
Sociology might work out, if were including realy odd ball Sci-Fi stuff like "Neo-Freudian Psycotherapy" as tecnologies in this area. Basicaly stuff that outside the sphere of goverment "Statecraft" but still need to go in this catagory.

_________________
Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

We are running in circles here.

Personally, I think having categories with words like 'Sociology' or 'Biology' tells the player nothing. This line of thinking is based on the player going 'okay, so I want to develop micro-growth-organisms to enhance my farming, and that's going to be under microbiology, so...'

Really, the player is going to go 'want better farms. oh look, farming.'

Even if something in the farm / growth category has nothing to do with actual farming, it's a space opera. It's going to help the food meter. That's the kind of simplicity and non-realism I'm looking for here.

_________________
Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Is it really such a stretch to equate "farming" with "biology"? Plants are alive, generally...

But I can see how "farming" is more directly to the point, though "Growth" is even more specific, as achiving growth is the point of improving your farming, as far as I know.


I'm suggesting "I want higher populataion. Oh look, growth."

And I see your point with Biology, but what's wrong with Sociology? Unless every tech choice is going to be a variation of "I want to increase my ___, so I need ___", then "Sociology" seems like a pretty good description to cover social engineering, governments, diplomacy, espionage, etc. Other than "Statecraft", what's the alternative...? A category called "Security" and another called "Happiness" ? And then another called "Espionage"?

Maybe the Sociology / Statecraft / Happiness / Security category should wait for later, just like ships and terraforming? There's nothing in v0.3 for either security or happiness, and no governments or social engineering...

The specific techs can go into the science fluff. But 'sociology' doesn't immediately tell me what its effect on the game will be. That doesn't mean we can't have all kinds of weird stuff in the category using as many big words as we want.

_________________
Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

that's something you always strive for, but more farming isn't.

_________________
Press any key to continue or any other key to cancel.
Can COWs fly?

I'm not sure if you're just rejecting sociology, or doing so in order to support "StateCraft". If the latter, how does "StateCraft" more clearly tell you what the effect will be?

It seems to me that the main purpose of the happiness, security, governments, culture, etc. is to keep your people under your control, or to subvert the control of other empires on their population. Keeping population happy, safe, or working at maximum efficiency, and social/political espionage and leaders are just ways of exerting control. So perhaps the category could be called "Control" or "Social Control"?

This doesn't really cover diplomacy very well, as diplomacy is interaction between empires, rather than empires and their population, but I doubt there'd be much diplomacy tech to worry about anyway.


Not necessarily... Rather than growing more workers, you could make the ones you have more productive / effecient.