FreeOrion

I'd have to say I prefer the idea I thought they were discussing to the one they actually were.

For example, Psicorp building has a good effect for all empires, but it gives +5 to max espionage on all planets if it's constructed on a planet containing telepaths. Or, Megathrusters increases the combat speed of regular ships by 15, but if the ship is manned by a Warlord race, it gets a bonus of 20. That way, the benefits of species bonuses last to the end of the game.

It's not clear that anything like this will be necessary for balancing, though it seems interesting regardless.

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Managing which ship is crewed with which species could be tedious. :/

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[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - xkcd

So species bonuses would affect planets and ships only.

I think this is quite an important point, which I for one didn't realise before. When designing species this should be made quite clear to everyone.

Unless we assume, that a ship is always crewed by the best people available to the empire. That means, if the empire has an avian race with bonuses to maneuverability, a specimen of this species will always be the designated pilot, even if he will be the only specimen of the species on the entire ship... In other words - we get all the bonuses from all the species in the empire. Still - this is more relating to species' ship bonus, not technology bonus...

EDIT: I'm not trying to talk to myself, just suggesting a solution to problem I brought up earlier.

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[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - xkcd

Currently, ships are manned by the species of the planet on which they were built. This just means that you'll want to build ships in locations where you have a particular species.

Another approach might be to specify species in the ship design while creating the design. Then, simply having that species in your empire (perhaps connected to the build location via resource supply lines), or having access to the species via other means (abduction espionage projects, for example, or android technology) would be required for a ship of that design to be constructed. This isn't terribly unbelievable either, since a ship piloted by Egassem would presumably have a vastly different design than an otherwise identical ship manned by the Gyisache, for example. The ship model used would also presumably be based on the species piloting it, rather than the starting species of the empire that created it.

Also, I recall eleazar having objections to needing to build shipyards at a location containing a particular species when you want to build colony ships with that species. I disagreed for a while, but doing it this way does allow for other, more interesting ways of acquiring species, such as the espionage or research projects mentioned above. Diplomacy might also be a viable option for being able to build ships with particular species.

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That would work too.

It could if we aren't careful. I'm confident we won't be switching the species of a ship on a ship-by-ship basis. And i expect than many/most species won't have a bonus or malus to ship performance, so that you would only care when for fraction of species that are especially good or bad pilots.

That solution is valid, it eliminates micromanagement. Though it would tend to push, "gotta catch em all" species collection to combine all the bonuses-- not that i'm sure that's bad.

I believe that's what i would like to see for colonization at least.


My preferred method for managing species crewing your space fleet is to give certain species "roles" within your empire. Warning: some of that may be out of date. In other words, to get the species bonus for certain jobs that aren't based on individual planets, you assign a species to do that job for the whole empire. Once the Alkri became loyal members of your empire, you could assign them to the fleet, and then all your fleet would automagically become crewed by Alkri, or would switcht to Alkri crew next time they were in a colonized system.

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Regarding roles concept - I like it. I would probably like some more granularity in military roles (ship crew, marines - used for boarding and defending ships, ground forces, fighter pilots), but I guess there's just so much complexity one can stand to manage.
Assigning a species to any of the more prominent roles (fleet, diplomacy, espionage) could give allegiance a boost to allegiance because of prestige gained.
Ability to assign different species to different roles could also be limited by the type of empire's government (If government types are planned).

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[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - xkcd

Well I can see 3 ways to do roles
1. Starting species only (MOO1-2 way) provides all the ground combat/space combat/ etc.

2. Specific roles on an Imperial basis
(this can be general.. all ships crewed by species X, or more specific: all ships piloted by species X, repaired by species Y, and guns manned by species Z)

3. Specific "units" have specific species handling all their functions
(This spy network is manned by species X, most other spy networks are manned by species Y)


For things like ships, I'd tend to go with #3, for diplomacy/espionage probably #2 (since we probably won't have spy "units")
Ground troops are complicated, #2 is probably the best way (although the empire should probably have a "Native" option for "garrison" troops..ie the troops are the same as the population)

I had assumed you were against the idea of species specific ship models. Your ship hull concepts are so extremely diverse that its hard to imagine an artist making a mobile sun, cluster of asteroids, living ship, an xentonium hull all look Glysache-ish, AND Trithian, etc.


I expect defending and invading ground troops will be handled separately. Defenders might always be the planet inhabitants. Invaders are not subtracted from population like MoO1. I'd explain it that very few individuals are needed; it the equipment that costs. So if the mauve empire sends 10 Bulrathi units to invade a Klackon planet, and 5 are killed in the battle, I think the mauve empire may they get a Klackon planet with a troop meter of 5. The in game explanation is that the mauve empire trained Klackon replacements to use the equipment and sent the bulrarhi home.

I know, it not the most satisfactory explanation but we have a troop meter. Planetary garrisons have to be a single specific species per planet.

Wait I think I understand your point now. With Roles, you could either assign a species to garrison all your planets, or probably by default allow every species to garrison it's own. I like that.

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Yeah, "Natives" would probably be better defenders against invasion (generally, plus if there end up being any EP effects on ground combat).. but they would probably be worse defenders against a rebellion.

Yes, I like that too. The only risk is to avoid roles working differently between areas of application. If we allow default by native assignment when no species is assigned a role, we also need to specify what is the native default for every role - espionage, diplomacy, fleet, ...

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[...] for Man has earned his right to hold this planet against all comers, by virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane. - xkcd

I would see another model:

If you have a new species in your empire, you should get a prompt to:
a) Commit genocide and kill all of the remains of a selected species in your empire and replace it with a chosen one (this would affect diplomatic relations with other empires. Mainly with the empire that consists mostly of the species being killed)
b) Enslave the whole species (cheap workers,constructors and researchers but affects diplomatic relations)
c) Assimilate it
d) Don't do anything, just administer the planet (I'll ecplain that in the last paragraph)

Once a species is assilmilated (every turn it would have a few points to the Assimilation meter iand once it reaches 100% a few options would be avialable). I'll call these options "Designations":
Designate to:
a) Research (The species stats would be used to do research). That way a player would have a reason to populate planets with that certain species.
b) Combat (With two options: Ground and Space)
c) Construction (Ships and ground infrastructure and special buildings)
d) Do nothing (No designation. No bonuses used)

The bonuses should be empire wide. And for example if a planet is populated by species A the infrastructure and ships are constructed by Species B. Species B only does the work they are deignated to and does not count to the overall population of the planet. The bonus could be calculated based on abudance of a species B in your empire. The bonus would be added to your starting races bonus based on that calculation/algorithm.

Explanation: The Starting species is always the dominant species. The dominant species does always does the work (produces ships, infrastructure, researches), but if you have another species more skilled in some taks it slowly replaces the original species in it's work, however the starting species always coorinates and administrates the whole project (that's why there's an additional bonus to your starting speces stats).

To compensate the "Gotta catch'em all" factor there could be penalties for having to many species in the empire. This could be achived by having a "Tolerancy" option in the race picks. For example: Tolerant species can assimilate many new species in the empire without penalties. Xenophobic species, on the other hand, can assimilate fewer species and if there are to many in the empire the player starts to get some penalties to research, production, etc. That's when the "Don't do anything" (d)) option kicks in. There will be no Xenophopic reaction from the society if there's no assimilation attempt, but you can choos to assimilate if the expected bonuses are far greater to the xenophobic reaction. It's your choice. Hey, if the empire's xenophobic it can always kill them after the assimilation if you don't like them. Forget the diplomacy You're probably at war with all your neigbours...

I don't think so. For some "roles" like diplomacy, the idea of a native default makes no sense.

Uziush Vielky:
Your model seems to have been designed with little knowledge of the systems long ago planned and implemented, and replicates and redesigns existing functionality.
For instance our focus system of resource production, construction etc. I suggest you spend some time playing 0.3.17 to get an idea of the foundation that new ideas should build on.

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I don't fully remember what was going to happen, but I was under the impression that "Constructed Hulls" would get individualized models for each species, and then the crazy stuff like Asteroid Hulls, Organic Hulls and Energy Hulls would get generic models (or, if as in my mock-up multiple-choice tree, Organic Hulls are just as standard as Constructed Hulls, perhaps each species would get its own model for those as well, though that's probably more trouble than its worth).

Read this thread.

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Have mercy! That's our longest and most complicated design thread in years.

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