FreeOrion

A further point. A system like i described above, where the growth focus is just used to "harvest" special resources, a simpler flat bonus makes sense. I.E. with the focus on "Growth" on a "Spice" planet all connected organic species get the full population bonus the next turn. There's no levels or concern for population or infrastructure. In other words, the conceptual baggage of the old food concept is fully shrugged off.

This might seems overly simplistic, but it avoids various problems, like displaying seldom-used growth and mining meters, or needing to make complicated leveled effects groups so only the best bonus will apply. If you have two, it doesn't matter which Spice planet you get the bonus from, since no matter the size, population, or infrastructure, both Spice planets give exactly the same bonus.

At the very least we should try it this way simpler way at first, and only add complications if it later becomes clear the complications are necessary.


EDIT: I'm working on a basic set of names and descriptions.

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I think the issue with that is stacking of different types of bonuses (not multiple instances of the same "Spice" bonus). Unless Spice is the only thing that can unlock a growth-boosting focus for a particular species, then multiple things can unlock growth boosts and presumably could stack on top of eachother. Assuming there's still some need to have a hard limit on population, how will direct bonuses stack so that an actual hard limit is possible? Or would reducing the max rate of resource output per population point mean there's no issue with having a large range of populations possible?

Um, that's the point. The number of different organic species population boosters is more than one but finite and known. (I mean it will be known once implemented) You can only reach the maximum population by collecting all the population boosters (or possibly researching and building synthetic replacements).

I have a nagging feeling i totally misinterpreted your question, but there's my best guess.

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No, I think we both understand eachother, and you answered my question.

To make things more concrete here's my current draft of Special Growth Resources. What i'm observing is it is hard to make up special names that are obviously useful for Lithovores and not Robots (or visa versa), and it's hard to make up concepts for Robot growth that doesn't sound like it would be of general benefit to industry.

Organic

Probiotic Soup
The great diversity of unique single-celled organisms have applications to the health and maintenance of all types of organic life.

Caretaker's Forest.
What appears to be a forest is actually part of a continent-spanning symbiotic organism. The fruit of these trees contains marvelously complex organic chemicals beneficial to all sorts of organic life.

Ki Spice
A unique substance produced by this planet's ecology, Ki Spice has the capacity to lengthen the lives, clarify the thoughts, or sharpen the senses of organic beings.

Silicoid Growth / Mining

Silmaline Crystals
Exotic Minerals
Heavy Elements

Robotic Growth / Industry ? (depending if Industry and Mining are distinct)

Monopole Magnets
Natural Superconductors
Positronium Ash

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The same specials / resources could be made useful for both. This might require players to pick between boosting growth of robotic species or boosting empire industry.
These should probably be given specific names, perhaps references like elerium, dilithium, neutronium, or molybdenum trioxide, or made up new ones like neotanium, isofluoride, omnichromium, or whatever.
I'd rather use "ambient superconductor", as there are plenty of "natural" supercondutors (eg. lead). Being "natural" doesn't make them particularly useful in of itself.

revision 4845
"Adding 3 new growth Special Resources for Organic species. Currently they only benefit Growth-focused planets, i'm not sure if my effects are wrong, or Bigjoe's growth stuff in species.txt premepts it."
These can work as special resources, weather or not the specific implementation for the growth focus described above is used.

Yeah, i don't mind having two mutually exclusive but possible uses for a special resource-- it's a significant binary choice.
I'm just concerned that it knocks down one more distinction between robots and lithovore/silicoids. Also if minerals & industry are merged, that would create a relatively high number of production boosting specials -- though perhaps when not used for growth, the benefit would only be local.


I'm a little out of my depth picking real elements or compounds that are
a) normally very rare
b) might plausibly contribute to the health of silicon-based or robotic life.

But i think it is important to have variety in the names to make each memorable. Many should use familiar words. Too many polysyllabic -iums, or -ides (actual or fictional) would tend to blur together.

I've also tried to orient many of the names and/or descriptions to having a great variety of stuff (i.e. exotic minerals, probiotic soup) this more plausibly lends itself to being useful for all the species in a group.


OK

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This will only work on planets with focus growth that are owned by source's owner empire, if the source is resource connected by source's owner empire to any object that is organic.

I don't think that's what you wanted.

If I'm correct, you want the effect to act on any object that is a planet and that is organic and that is owned by source's owner empire and that is resource supply connected by source's owner empire to source, if the source has focus growth, which would be something like:



Also, if we've decided to ditch the Growth meter, I'll get that stuff out of the way so it's easier to work.

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Yep, thanks, that's what i wanted.


I think we have. At any rate, this should be easier to try than a lot of previous ideas.


revision 4849
"Adding 3 new growth Special Resources for Robotic species. And making the Organic species specials work right."

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Should we add techs/use existing techs to enable/enhance the use of each special? The growth tree is looking awfully useless at the moment...

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The techs that increase the target population are still relevant, right? Anyway they could be.

We've done a lot of tearing down, rebuilding, and tearing down again in the past couple months. And there are still a lot of relevant factors up in the air or else untested. I'd advise doing things the simplest more minimalistic way that's reasonable until we get a better handle on exactly how this will all work. I think three growth specials for each metabolism type is probably too few, for instance, but it's good enough to start with.


Also note there's a high probability of a guardian monster at each growth special. I've just got them commented out so i can test the functioning easier.

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I guess before we do anything like that, we need to decide what the max population is going to be, and where those bonuses are going to come from for each metabolism type.

By the way, where do the Chato'matou'Gormoshk fit into the spectrum of metabolic types? Are we just calling them organic, and assuming the growth of the Chato'matou due to sunlight is irrelevant?

It would be nice to be able to fit the main existing species concepts into the system, if possible.

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When in doubt it is not organic. The large majority are already.
But since the photosynthesizing Chato don't absolutely need the Gormoshk, I have no hesitation giving that label to the species.

Edit: it seems "Phototroph" is the correct general term for "light eaters". "photosynthesis" is a particular method of using light for energy.

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I have an idea to make the growth focus more relevant to the game, especially early game before you've explored much. But i have no idea how to script it, without making an annoying number of duplicate.

Background Fluff:
Every planet is a little bit different, even after everything super science can do to make it fit for a species. And a native species and their homeworld over the centuries have fit themselves to each other. There never will be another planet where everything is quite as congenial to the species. Various minor luxuries, cultural items, and organic compounds can only come from a homeworld, so any species colony recieving growth stuff from it's homeworld can grow bigger.

So, what if the building "Cultural Archives" (which represents homeworld status) allowed the growth focus on that planet. It would work similarly to the focus on the growth special planets but it would only benefit that species. However the homeworld would get the + pop target weather it was focused on growth or not.

We'd have to delete the cultural archives is the planet was occupied by another species (or if the population ever fell to zero).

We also should give the cultural archives to non-imperial species.


This would make sure every empire has at least one planet with a potential growth focus, and hopeful, provide some interesting strategic choices between taking advantage of a homeworld's high population to get work done, or setting it to growth to grow all the other colonies.

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revision 4853
"implemented a very simplistic, but functional phototrophic bonus to population."

Note also that the Super-Testers are tagged with all 4 metabolism types, so you can test, robotic, lithic, organic, and phototrophic bonuses with them.

Note thirdly, that the population numbers that i've been putting in recently are plucked out of the air, and don't take into account planet size. That's not the final plan -- i just find it easier to test and hack together the basic functionality this way.

EDIT: this is going to be different from what we originally planned, but i think it's going to work-- i like how it is shaping up.

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