Public Review: v0.30 Nuts and Bolts

Past public reviews and discussions.
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Ellestar
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#31 Post by Ellestar »

There is a "Multiplicative" modification type in a meters so i don't think that it's a good idea to shift or scale meters in programming.
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Hmm. Another population growth formula?

So now a number of planets is more important than quality. A planet with 40 health (as i understand, Optimal Environments+Adequately fed, Average size) grows to population of 20 in 10 turns. Planet builds another colony ship in 27 turns.

Planet with 25 health (Terrible Environments+Adequately fed, Average size) grows to population of 6 in 10 turns. Planet builds another colony ship in 44 turns.

Now an interesting stuff.
Planet with 30 health (Optimal Environments+Poorly fed, Average size) grows to population of 20 in 19 turns. Planet builds another colony ship in 28 turns (compared to 27 turns with 40 health). That's not good, homeworld will be switched from a farming focus.

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By the way, IMHO first you should decide if you want migration to a new planets or you don't want it in addition to inventing population growth formulas because they depend on each other.
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Edit:

Maybe it's a good idea to implement a mirror-like star system generation? In almost all PvP games, everyone uses maps with an equal territory for each player. That's including games like SMAC. So one sector of a galaxy map should be copied N (N-number of players) times by turning it around a center of the galaxy.
Last edited by Ellestar on Mon Aug 16, 2004 9:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.

drek
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#32 Post by drek »

As i thought about it, i discovered that this is a programming decision which none of you guys should bother. It's something i have to decide on my own (or together with zach). So never mind.
Agreed, but:
There is a "Multiplicative" modification type in a meters so i don't think that it's a good idea to shift or scale meters in programming.

This:
2- meters with negaive and positiv effects : -20 - 80.
Might be a pain if someone wants to fiddle with the breakeven number.

The "breakeven" number is something that should probably be in a config file somewhere. Or at the least, a const in the C++ code.

Ellestar
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#33 Post by Ellestar »

V.3 Requirements wrote:Buildings may have pre-requisites, including:
Primary focus set to X;
Planetary environment preference > X
Previous building X already exists (in the Empire | on the target planet)
Technology X has been discovered
Population > X
Infrastructure (to be detailed when Infrastructure is finished; likely 'Y meter > X) -Aq)
Previous building X already exists (in the Empire | on the target planet | in the galaxy (for big wonders))

Technology X has been discovered - maybe it's better to make so technology sets constant to "true" or 1 and all buildings/ships/events etc. check for a constant instead of a tech? That way, it's possible to make some effects or wonders like a SuperShipyard that allows to make Battleships before player got a technology.
The difference is that it's possible to make a wonder that does that without changing a conditions on a buildings/ships/effects etc. AFAIK most games work that way.


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Bulding stops working when conditions are no longer true? If yes, then how about upkeep for a building?

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Geoff the Medio
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#34 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Ellestar wrote:Now an interesting stuff.
Planet with 30 health (Optimal Environments+Poorly fed, Average size) grows to population of 20 in 19 turns. Planet builds another colony ship in 28 turns (compared to 27 turns with 40 health). That's not good, homeworld will be switched from a farming focus.
I suggested other, probably better, alternatives here: viewtopic.php?p=13908#13908

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Geoff the Medio
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#35 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I assume this review covers the the stuff in the effects document linked from the v0.3 DD as well as the main DD itself. (see here: http://www.freeorion.org/wiki/index.php?title=Effects )

There hasn't been much (any?) discusson on this though, so I suggest people have another / a first look at that page.

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Geoff the Medio
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#36 Post by Geoff the Medio »

IMO there should be another class of planet environment quality. Just having Optimal, Adequate and Terrible means that a planet two environments away from a race's environment preference is just as good/bad as one that's on the opposite side of the wheel. This strikes me as odd...

Assuming there was already big debate on this, I suppose it's not likely to change. But if there wasn't and it might, I'd suggest calling the environments that are two away from optimal "Poor" and three or more away "Terrible" (and adding all the various other things that an extra category would require).

A separate suggestion is to rename "Terrible" to "Hostile"

Daveybaby
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#37 Post by Daveybaby »

I agree. It kinda makes sense to have 2 categories in between 'optimal' and 'uninhabitable'.

:arrow: Optimal - ideal for your species. Your population breed like rabbits.
:arrow: Adequate - Not a nice place to live, but you can at least survive there with a minimum of equipment. Medium pop. growth.
:arrow: Inhospitable - Survival is hard and expensive. You can just about scrape by. Low population growth.
:arrow: Hostile : Cannot survive on the surface without significant protection (i.e. a full environment suit). Population growth grinds to a virtual standstill.
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drek
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#38 Post by drek »

The categories Daveybaby listed seem fine to me. No objection to the change being made.

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Geoff the Medio
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#39 Post by Geoff the Medio »

IMO "Poor" is better for 2 away than "Inhospitible" ... latter is a tad too many syllables, and is not clearly better than "Hostile".

At the start of the game, Poor/Inhospitable planets should be nearly as useless as Hostile ones. With advancing tech, they should become more useful, whereas hostile would remain nearly useless much longer.

Suggested pop limits for Hostile are half of the current for Terrible, so we'd have:

Code: Select all

           tny sml med lrg hge
Superb     10  20  25  30  35
Optimal    8   16  20  25  30
Adequate   4   8   12  16  20
Poor       2   4   6   8   10
Hostile    1   2   3   4   5
Then again, we could make Hostile start with all 0's (be uninhabitable) until appropriate tech is discovered.

Oh yeah, and rename "Average" planet size to "Medium". "Average" implies the mean, which isn't necessarily true, as the statistical weighting of planet sizes may put the "Average" above or below the middlemost size in the list.

LithiumMongoose
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#40 Post by LithiumMongoose »

Not to be nitpicky, but Optimal by definition means "the best possible", so to put it below Superb in your list Geoff kinda bothers me.

I would humbly suggest Good and Paradise (to steal something from MOO3 I liked) for the top two levels.

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Geoff the Medio
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#41 Post by Geoff the Medio »

LithiumMongoose wrote:Not to be nitpicky, but Optimal by definition means "the best possible", so to put it below Superb in your list Geoff kinda bothers me.

I would humbly suggest Good and Paradise (to steal something from MOO3 I liked) for the top two levels.
Sounds good.

New Suggestions:

At start of game:

Code: Select all

           tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise   10  20  25  30  35
Good       8   16  20  25  30
Adequate   1   2   3   4   5
Poor       0   0   0   0   0
Hostile    0   0   0   0   0
After one or two initial techs:

Code: Select all

           tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise   10  20  25  30  35
Good       8   16  20  25  30
Adequate   2   4   6   8   10
Poor       0   0   0   0   0
Hostile    0   0   0   0   0
After a few techs:

Code: Select all

           tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise   10  20  25  30  35
Good       8   16  20  25  30
Adequate   4   8   12  16  20
Poor       1   2   3   4   5
Hostile    0   0   0   0   0
After a few more techs:

Code: Select all

           tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise   10  20  25  30  35
Good       8   16  20  25  30
Adequate   6   12  16  20  25
Poor       2   4   6   8   10
Hostile    0   0   0   0   0
After even more techs:

Code: Select all

           tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise   10  20  25  30  35
Good       8   16  20  25  30
Adequate   8   16  20  25  30
Poor       4   8   12  16  20
Hostile    1   2   3   4   5
Near the end of the game:

Code: Select all

           tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise   10  20  25  30  35
Good       8   16  20  25  30
Adequate   8   16  20  25  30
Poor       6   12  16  20  25
Hostile    2   4   6   8   10
At the end of the game:

Code: Select all

           tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise   10  20  25  30  35
Good       8   16  20  25  30
(any non-gaia environment is good at the end of the game, and gaia remains better still... and unreachable by standard terraforming)

(Also, this is terraforming, so the best you can possibly do is to make it the same as your homeworld. This is not the place to improve beyond your homeworld's starting capacity)

Dreamer
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#42 Post by Dreamer »

4 things:

1.- " If the Health Meter is equal to 20: Population Change=0" This is redundant since the formulae for Health>20 also gives 0 in that case. Slould be >= 20.

2.- Is the modification to planet enviroment due to planet size really relevant? Enviroment is affected by system slot and planet size, but planet size is also affected by system slot. So the slot affects the enviroment directly and indirectly. Personally I think that size shouldn`t affect enviroment at all.

3.- What about opening a post here for each section (and maybe sub-section) instead of a unique thread for all 0.3 requirements. It should help to isolate topics and allow for a better discussion.

4.- First post here (in design) so greetings everybody! I'm still a newbie to all this but I really want to help. Please let me know when I'm making mistakes.

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Geoff the Medio
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#43 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dreamer wrote:3.- What about opening a post here for each section (and maybe sub-section) instead of a unique thread for all 0.3 requirements. It should help to isolate topics and allow for a better discussion.
There hasn't really been much interest in the details of the v0.3 design so far... probably not enough to warrant separate threads.
4.- First post here (in design) so greetings everybody! I'm still a newbie to all this but I really want to help. Please let me know when I'm making mistakes.
Great to have you. There's not a whole lot of game mechanics design discussion going on right now, though the time will come. Until then, you can always post in brainstorming.

Rapunzel
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#44 Post by Rapunzel »

Maybe it's just me, but the link
http://www.freeorion.org/wiki/index.php ... quirements
just gives me a "NOT found" ... :?:
Is there another way to the desighndocument discussed here??
Dieser Text basiert ausschließlich auf frei erfundener Interpunktion und Orthographie. Jegliche Uebereinstimmungen mit geltenden Regelungen sind rein zufaellig und wurden nicht beabsichtigt.

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Geoff the Medio
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#45 Post by Geoff the Medio »

That link was from when the wiki wasn't the main page of the site. If you see any other such links with /wiki in them, just remove the /wiki part...

http://www.freeorion.org/index.php?titl ... quirements

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