Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

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Ophiuchus
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Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#1 Post by Ophiuchus »

When thinking of the sly, id like to make gas giants more diverse while

So I read a little about gas giants and found them to be actually very diverse. One big distinction one could make is between gas giants and ice giants by the main elements they consist of.
According to Sudarsky's gas giant classification there are five types of gas giants:
  1. Ammonia clouds
  2. Water clouds
  3. Cloudless
  4. Alkali metals
  5. Silicate clouds
i would like to add these as specials on gas giants (cloudless == no special) and have the gas giant colors reflect the color of the clouds (so you could see without seeing the special what kind of clouds).
Clouds would give a stealth boost which is below standard detection (10). Sly stealth gets nerfed a bit (?35), so the combination with clouds is greater than 40.
Gas giant species would get a preference for a certain cloud type, so the giants give certain population boosts.
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Dilvish
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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#2 Post by Dilvish »

I'm afraid I don't really like the general idea of intertwining the issues of population and stealth for the Sly (and any other Gas Giant species). I'm concerned both about the extra play complication, and the design balance difficulty (and corresponding development time needed).

Rather than coming up significantly new metabolism twists to try balancing the Sly, I really think we should just go with a new Very Bad Population designation as I think Geoff had suggested on GitHub and I had seconded there. Yes, the specific designation would be slightly new, but it fits within the same general pattern of traits that we have had for a long time. And it would very closely match the results from the GasGiant size=4 change you had tried and at least as far as balancing the Sly went that change worked fine.
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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#3 Post by Oberlus »

Dilvish wrote:Rather than coming up significantly new metabolism twists to try balancing the Sly, I really think we should just go with a new Very Bad Population designation as I think Geoff had suggested on GitHub and I had seconded there.
I'm sorry I can't find where you are talking about this in GitHub, so I'll speak here without knowing the whole thing.

I already tested a -50% population trait (with same priority than other population traits, very early IIRC) to balance Sly, and that failed miserably. Maybe a -50% population malus could work if you give it less priority than (i.e. applied after) subterranean/orbital/N-dimensional habitation techs, and only self-sustaining bonus stays unaffected by the malus. Otherwise it won't get results similar to those from changing GG size to 4. But I'll be happy to test anything you toss into master.

Anyway, I didn't think this suggestion about differentiating GGs had nothing/much to do with the Sly population problem, but just about bringing in a new metabolism into game. Regarding this, I'm also in the side of preferring just the 5 metabolisms we already have and let "gas bags" to be one of those.

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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#4 Post by Dilvish »

Oberlus wrote:I'm sorry I can't find where you are talking about this in GitHub,
It was in this stockpile 4 PR, with Vezzra's comment, Geoff's comment, and my comment

I already tested a -50% population trait (with same priority than other population traits, very early IIRC) to balance Sly, and that failed miserably. Maybe a -50% population malus could work if you give it less priority
As indicate here you suspected, and as I noted in my comment linked above, getting the -50% pop malus to match the gas giant pop size of 4 would likely require adjusting the priority, and yes, it would need to be a later priority.
Anyway, I didn't think this suggestion about differentiating GGs had nothing/much to do with the Sly population problem
As noted in that github discussion, agrrr3 (Ophiuchus) said he'd look at introducing a new metabolism for the Sly as an alternative to the gas giant pop size 4.

Geoff has merged the PR a few hours ago, though it appears to me that he left the GasGiant size = 4 part out. I think that the -50% pop should work out fine with the right priority, I'll experiment with that some.

Right now I need to rush and put in a couple more commits dealing with the Sly & GasGiant Supply changes that were in that PR, see if I can get them in before Vezzra makes this weeks build. (The Sly PR that got merged a few days ago was dealt with the previous Sly related changes, not these new ones).
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#5 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dilvish wrote:Right now I need to rush and put in a couple more commits dealing with the Sly & GasGiant Supply changes that were in that PR...
I asked @freeorion/ai-team in a comment on the pull request discussion for comments or objections on the pull request 6 days ago, so hoped that had been enough time, I went ahead and merged to get it into the test build...

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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#6 Post by Ophiuchus »

Dilvish wrote:he left the GasGiant size = 4 part out
Dilvish wrote:I really think we should just go with a new Very Bad Population designation
I introduced a 0.5 population multiplier in that PR only applying to gas giants.
The effectsgroup with the accountinglabel = "BAD_ENVIRONMENT_LABEL"
I hope that is not more complicated for the AI?
(The result should be like a GasGiant size = 3 ; maybe that would be enough for the AI?)
Dilvish wrote:I'm afraid I don't really like the general idea of intertwining the issues of population and stealth for the Sly (and any other Gas Giant species). I'm concerned both about the extra play complication, and the design balance difficulty (and corresponding development time needed).
:(
Dilvish wrote:Rather than coming up significantly new metabolism twists to try balancing the Sly
The main metabolism twist for balancing the gaseous is: half the population on gas giants and unlike any other species they dont have any population bonus. (From a technical point of view I needed the metabolism for the other metabolism effects not to apply... it could also be a blanko/catchall metabolism which could be used for any non-standard population species)

In this thread I wanted to explore ideas how to make the sly more interesting again.
Last edited by Ophiuchus on Mon Feb 12, 2018 9:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#7 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote:I already tested a -50% population trait (with same priority than other population traits, very early IIRC) to balance Sly, and that failed miserably. Maybe a -50% population malus could work if you give it less priority than (i.e. applied after) subterranean/orbital/N-dimensional habitation techs, and only self-sustaining bonus stays unaffected by the malus. Otherwise it won't get results similar to those from changing GG size to 4. But I'll be happy to test anything you toss into master.
Its there now with default priority :)
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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#8 Post by Dilvish »

Ophiuchus wrote:Its there now with default priority :)
Ah, ok, I had missed that when I glanced over the PR a few hours ago. Do we have a list anywhere of all the Population type Effects and what their priorities are? (If not, we should, hehe.) Or did you perhaps make one when deciding to leave that at AVERAGE rather than later? (I need to figure out at what stage of the AI population prediction calculation the adjustment needs to go).
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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#9 Post by Dilvish »

I decided to go ahead and make a wiki reference page with some info on the standard priority reference values and with the set of population effect priorities; it can be found here: http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/Effe ... ard_Values
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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#10 Post by Ophiuchus »

Dilvish wrote:I decided to go ahead and make a wiki reference page with some info on the standard priority reference values and with the set of population effect priorities; it can be found here: http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/Effe ... ard_Values
Nice you put it in a central place. Is there a way to get access to the wiki? The growth specials should be added to VERY_LATE_PRIORITY. It would also be good if the boni.

I used default priority for consistency because the bad_population is like that (didnt recognize the good bonus is actually earlier).
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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#11 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Ophiuchus wrote:Is there a way to get access to the wiki?
Check your email.

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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#12 Post by Oberlus »

CON_NDIM_STRC, with EARLY_TARGET_POPULATION_PRIORITY, is missing in the list.

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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#13 Post by Dilvish »

Oberlus wrote:CON_NDIM_STRC, with EARLY_TARGET_POPULATION_PRIORITY, is missing in the list.
Ah, thx, got it now.
Ophiuchus wrote:The growth specials should be added to VERY_LATE_PRIORITY.
I just double checked, and they are correctly listed as EARLY_TARGET_POPULATION_PRIORITY. And I recall from past planning discussions that their early application is quite intentional, so they they can allow planets to qualify for other bonuses that are contingent on current target pop being non-negative (though I haven't checked if we still need them for that purpose).
I used default priority for consistency because the bad_population is like that (didnt recognize the good bonus is actually earlier).
The Good bonus did not used to be so early, it was changed when the meter regen got moved from C++ into FOCS, and it seems to me that it must throw off results. I've pinged Geoff about it, but I can't test right now because my new FO build is insisting on crashing on me.
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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#14 Post by Ophiuchus »

Ophiuchus wrote:The growth specials should be added to VERY_LATE_PRIORITY.
I just double checked, and they are correctly listed as EARLY_TARGET_POPULATION_PRIORITY. And I recall from past planning discussions that their early application is quite intentional, so they they can allow planets to qualify for other bonuses that are contingent on current target pop being non-negative (though I haven't checked if we still need them for that purpose).
Hm, you are right.. dont know what I saw.

But should self-sustaining not have the same effect? (I dont mind its not the same, but we should update the description)
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Re: Clouds on Gas Giants and other Sly ideas

#15 Post by Oberlus »

I think there is an error in the wiki:
I can't find any condition in GRO_SUBTER_HAB to limit its effect to good and adequate environments, plus the description says Subterranean Habitation affects all environments.

BTW: great work with that page, very useful.

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