Diversifying Species

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#1 Post by **eleazar** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 3:47 pm

revision 4668

Species Macros applied across the board.
 ~ All species now have different aptitudes at resource production and ground combat.  A few require no food, and a few have special stealth and detection abilities.
 ~ ~ Sorry, currently not balanced, and not documented.
 ~ ~ All normal species now have the previously human-only starvation mechanic.

From 15k lines to 2k lines

Due to some of the concerns discussed in this topic, i've de-emphasized exotic species, by removing the robots, non-organics, etc from the list of playable species. All the previous species are still in the game as minor species. But i've upped the total number of playable species to 12, each with unique (and totally unbalanced) advantages and disadvantages.

If you want to find out what those are, for now, look at species.txt. It should be fairly readable.

KEY:

"Terrible" produces 50%
"Poor" produces 75% (currently not used)
"Average" produces 100%
"Good" produces 150% (currently not used)
"Great" produces 200%
"Ultimate" produces 300%

#2 Post by **Geoff the Medio** » Thu Feb 23, 2012 7:20 pm

eleazar wrote:...i've upped the total number of playable species to 12...

Unless there's a compelling reason, I'd like to keep the total playable species to 10 or less, and perhaps closer to 8. Having too many options to chose from makes things quite intimidating for players, leading to decision paralysis. Fewer more-distinct options let the player more-easily be sure he / she has the best one for what they want and be happy about the decision.

Bigjoe5 · #3 Post by **Bigjoe5** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 12:26 am

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:...i've upped the total number of playable species to 12...
Unless there's a compelling reason, I'd like to keep the total playable species to 10 or less, and perhaps closer to 8. Having too many options to chose from makes things quite intimidating for players, leading to decision paralysis. Fewer more-distinct options let the player more-easily be sure he / she has the best one for what they want and be happy about the decision.

Do you mean in the long-term, or just for now? I'd have hoped to have at least two playable species per EP, though 1 per EP seems fine for now.

#4 Post by **Geoff the Medio** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 12:40 am

Bigjoe5 wrote:Do you mean in the long-term, or just for now?

Long term.

#5 Post by **eleazar** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 4:41 am

Bigjoe5 wrote: I'd have hoped to have at least two playable species per EP, though 1 per EP seems fine for now.

yeah, that's what I was doing 2 for each EP, minus inferno, barren and radiated.

This is by no means supposed to be a final lineup. I would like to have a high-ish number of potential imperial opponents, though not as strongly as I would like to have a high number of minor species.

Bigjoe5 · #6 Post by **Bigjoe5** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 6:10 pm

In the latest revision, it looks like there are still a few stray non-macro'd starvation effectsgroups lying around.

Also, since when do Trith have EP Tundra?

I'm also a bit confused at some of the choices for major species (no Egassem?), but that's not that important...

Aside from that, I really like how easy it is to read/modify the species descriptions now. It looks really great overall.

Bigjoe5 · #7 Post by **Bigjoe5** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:53 pm

Bigjoe5 wrote:In the latest revision, it looks like there are still a few stray non-macro'd starvation effectsgroups lying around.

Nvm, looks like that was my fault - I had added that to every species, and it didn't go away when I used svn update. Deleting the file and reupdating got rid of them.

Funny thing is though, species aren't showing up for me. I'm getting

Code: Select all

2012-02-24 13:49:48,555 ERROR Client : C:\Users\Isaac\Downloads\Games\FreeOrion_VS2010_SDK\FreeOrion\default\species.txt:15:8: Parse error.  Expected Focus here:
          [[HAS_FARMING_FOCUS]]
          ^

I'm assuming these macros work for you, so I'm not sure what the deal is, since I literally updated from svn five minutes ago.

#8 Post by **Geoff the Medio** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:11 pm

Bigjoe5 wrote:I'm getting
Code: Select all
2012-02-24 13:49:48,555 ERROR Client : C:\Users\Isaac\Downloads\Games\FreeOrion_VS2010_SDK\FreeOrion\default\species.txt:15:8: Parse error.  Expected Focus here:
          [[HAS_FARMING_FOCUS]]
          ^
I'm assuming these macros work for you, so I'm not sure what the deal is, since I literally updated from svn five minutes ago.

Are you still using the v0.4 release? Macro support was added after v0.4, and as noted here there are newer test releases available. Just updating from SVN without building or replacing the executables won't work...

#9 Post by **eleazar** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 9:27 pm

Bigjoe5 wrote:Also, since when do Trith have EP Tundra?

Since this update. It seemed to me the radiated thing was from when they used to be energy beings.

Bigjoe5 wrote:I'm also a bit confused at some of the choices for major species (no Egassem?), but that's not that important...

Background in this thread:
All the techs (especially farming and health), and meters assume a DNA-based, organic, life-as-we-know-it being. Fusion-powered, lava dwelling Egassem, & robotic Cray aren't ---though i really like those species concepts. So i moved them out of the "playable" tier to "minor" status. Since barren, inferno, and radiated EPs imply life not-as-we-know-it, none of the current playable species come from those planets.

At some point in the future i hope we have additional content (tech branches, "health" etc.) so these (and others like them) can again be playable species with techs, etc that make sense.

Bigjoe5 · #10 Post by **Bigjoe5** » Fri Feb 24, 2012 10:22 pm

Geoff the Medio wrote:
Bigjoe5 wrote:I'm getting
Code: Select all
2012-02-24 13:49:48,555 ERROR Client : C:\Users\Isaac\Downloads\Games\FreeOrion_VS2010_SDK\FreeOrion\default\species.txt:15:8: Parse error.  Expected Focus here:
          [[HAS_FARMING_FOCUS]]
          ^
I'm assuming these macros work for you, so I'm not sure what the deal is, since I literally updated from svn five minutes ago.
Are you still using the v0.4 release? Macro support was added after v0.4, and as noted here there are newer test releases available. Just updating from SVN without building or replacing the executables won't work...

Oh, yeah, that was dumb of me...

Bigjoe5 · #11 Post by **Bigjoe5** » Sat Feb 25, 2012 1:12 am

Certain bonuses, such as Ultimate Detection and Ultimate Stealth don't have any effect, due to species bonuses being applied before anything else. It's basically 0*1.5 or 2, or in the case of stealth, the inherent 0.1 * 2, which is still hardly ultimate. I think a fixed bonus works better for stealth and detection anyway, actually. By the way, did the scaling for stealth and detection change a while back? It seems that now 1 unit of detection allows you to see 1 uu further away instead of 10, or whatever it was before. Does 1 unit of stealth still counter 1 unit of detection?

#12 Post by **eleazar** » Sun Feb 26, 2012 3:11 pm

Bigjoe5 wrote:Certain bonuses, such as Ultimate Detection and Ultimate Stealth don't have any effect

Thanks, fixed: I tested, but got confused about what the "normal" values were.
revision 4671
"fixed species stealth and detection modifiers to something that actually works."

Bigjoe5 wrote:By the way, did the scaling for stealth and detection change a while back? It seems that now 1 unit of detection allows you to see 1 uu further away instead of 10, or whatever it was before. Does 1 unit of stealth still counter 1 unit of detection?

Yeah, IIRC, the units of UU, stealth, & detection are now all on the same scale.

Unfortunately the others moved to the UU scale, which means a detection of 100 isn't very impressive, even assuming un-stealthed enemies, but fills up the meter. Detection of 100 has the same range that a detection of 10 used to.

#13 Post by **eleazar** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 4:51 am

revision 4687:
"partial implementation of species picks in their 'pedia description."

I've reduced the chance of error by giving the macros the same name. To keep the description up to date, paste this into the appropriate part of the species description.

Code: Select all

Species
    name = "SP_FIFTYSEVEN"
    description = "SP_FIFTYSEVEN_DESC"
    
    foci = [
        [[HAS_FARMING_FOCUS]]
        [[HAS_RESEARCH_FOCUS]]
        [[HAS_ADVANCED_FOCI]]
    ]
    
    effectsgroups = [
>>        [[TERRIBLE_FARMING]]
>>        [[NO_MINING]]
>>        [[NO_INDUSTRY]]
>>        [[ULTIMATE_RESEARCH]]
>>        
>>        [[TERRIBLE_GROUND_TROOPS]]
        
...

#14 Post by **eleazar** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 4:14 am

revision 4689
Finished putting picks in species descriptions.

I guess the next step is to figure out how broken and unbalanced it is.

#15 Post by **eleazar** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 9:59 pm

I wonder...

It might make more sense if the stealthiness is supposed to represent-- not an innate ability-- but something the species prioritizes, if we simply give those species the basic level stealth tech at the start of the game. Similarly aggressive/warlike species might start the game with better weapon techs.

What happens if i give a tech to a species that's not part of an empire?

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