FreeOrion

I was briefly working on an indicator that would show all the effects of an object on other objects' meters (of a particular type). There's on on population panels when not expanded for population. Is that (still) useful / needed with how things are now?

I want to just point out, that the current direction is similar to how things were in Civilization IV with food resources (like wheat, rice, etc.). In civilization they both gave local bonus (per tile) and empire-wide bonus (restricted to trade network). Any surplus instances could be traded to other empires.

I'm not saying FO should be made like Civ, just that something could be learnt from this approach.

I propose that growth resources should give some flat bonus on the local planet (which in FreeOrion somewhat parallels Civ tile) and another bonus : supply-restricted but otherwise empire-wide.

Also, for lithovore growth specials you could consider "Pure something ore", or "High-energy mineraloid".

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Geoff has elsewhere made the point that there's no need for a "growth-rate" stat, because higher target populations lead to faster growth. While a system with fewer stats is preferable, i think it's likely that we may want techs to be able to improve the growth rate independently. (At the very least i'd like to be able to have a zero growth rate for robots and sterile minor species -- which wouldn't necessitate a meter)

So while i want to give things a try without a growth-rate stat, all the old heath techs could be later repurposed into growth-rate boosting techs for organic species.


Currently i don't see a need.



I love Civ IV, but what is this lesson you think we should learn? Why is that better?

Currently they provide no benefit if the focus isn't growth. They could plausibly provide the population bonus to that planet if the species was the right type, no matter the focus.

I'm also planning to make at least some of them provide a bonus to types of production with the appropriate focus.


Not bad.

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It might work to do growth with effects that modify that actual population meter - not just target - though I think there used to be some issues with doing that sort of meter modification... At the very least, the meter change predictions won't work without some significant fixing, as I don't think they handle effects-based modifications to persistent meters properly.

Having the growth rate stat as something distinct from but related to the maximum population could come in handy when creating individual species characteristics. For example, it might be desirable to have a species that gets a bonus to maximum population but a penalty to growth rate, meaning that that their colonies take longer to develop, but are better in the long run. Similarly, another species might have a penalty to maximum population and a bonus to growth rate, meaning that their colonies develop faster but the species needs more colonies to get the same effect as others.

Yeah point made, you could build different species concepts with that. But the question is weather that difference is interesting enough to warrant adding a meter. This question IMHO hasn't been answered yet. And weather it is technically possible at least for the moment.

revision 4864
"Lithic growth boosting specials, that double as mineral specials
> a new growth focus icon
> growth-boosting specials not have a little letter in the corner to help you remember what is good for what
> futher incomplete work on the homeworld species-specific growth effects.
> minor tweaks."

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Currently (or at least as of my 4852 binary),
if a colony support is cut off and the target is reduced to zero, it will die in one turn. Is that intentional? It seems rather abrupt.

Of course, i'm not sure if i want population bonus specials to be able to improve a planet which has a zero base population -- but that's a content issue.

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Nothing has changed since this.

as of revision 4882
All the groundwork for a growth system is laid: specials are added, foci is appears when needed, phototrophic species respond to the sun, and homeworlds provide a growth bonus, which can be shared.

But none of the new population bonuses take into account planet size. The bonus numbers, were randomly pulled out of my hat. With those disclaimers, you can test it and see how it feels.

Also, you can now colonize previously uninhabitable planets with the aid of a compatible growth focus-- Do you think that is desirable or not?

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This would be an equivalent of sending food/supplies to mining colonies on otherwise uninhabitable planets, like what could be seen in MoO2, no?
Sounds good.

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Basically, but without the awkward and arbitrary distribution rules for a system of limited resources.

I think it's a good idea, since I was disappointed with the loss of ability to starve planets to death with a blockade when food was originally removed.

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That approach could lead to simpler effects groups.

For it to make sense, instead of having many effects groups to manage all the variables and spit out 1 population number per planet, we could instead give a negative base population to hostile planets (alterable by tech) so while you could colonize a poor planet with homeworld and/or special resource support, you would need more of the same to colonize a hostile planet, or it wouldn't get you as far.

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In latest my play test, i had very little incentive to use the growth focus on homeworlds. This would probably only change when i had multiple colonies with near maximum population, so that the loss of the productivity of the homeworld would be offset by the additional productivity of the other colonies.

To make the growth focus more viable, i'm thinking to make "adequate" planets start with a target population of zero. Poor planets would start with a modest negative target, and hostile planets a large target. The xeno-bio tech would gradually increase the target pop as before.

This approach would i think increase the value of the homeworld growth focus and the xeno-bio techs.

If you haven't tried a very recent FO, geoff flattened out planet type distribution, so there a 1/9 chance any planet will be "good" now -- terran, ocean, tundra, etc. aren't super-rare, so don't panic and think you won't be able to colonize anything.

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I like that also. By the way, are the spawnrates for the growth specials so ridiculously high for gameplay, or testing? Either way, you left Lithic specials with a spawn rate of 1.0. It was kind of disheartening to play a game as the Egassem...

Also, what is the plan for Lithic specials when mining is gone? Something like mineral rich could increase production, but maybe others are better geared towards being strategic resources in the sense of allowing you to create particular items. That could apply to Organic and Robotic specials as well - for instance, Rich Minerals and Ambient Superconductors could be specials that increase production on all planets in the resource group, whereas something like Positronium Ash might be needed to build ships with positronium-based ship parts in the resource group (perhaps using the "Mining" focus to extract the "resource"). Maybe organic ships need a source of Ki Spice to be built with the ship part that allows them to breath fireballs at their enemies.

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Some nitpicks based on rev 4857.

I'm mid-game, but I think I have discovered all techs related to population. Also, I have one working growth special affecting practically all planets.

1) Unhabitable planets have a max pop of 2 and hostile planets have a max pop of 1.sth. Still, the numbers are weird - why do unhabitable planets have a better pop than hostile ones?

2) Large adequate and large poor planets have the same max pop. Weird, weird, weird.

3) And asteroids have a pop of 5! What's goin' on?

EDIT: I don't have Cyborgs researched yet. But all the others.