Terraform Exobot colonies

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Dilvish
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Re: Terraform Exobot colonies

#31 Post by Dilvish »

mem359 wrote:I don't see how 2 out of 18 can be considered as "many" having nothing to do with those 3 techs.
You nominally "apple-gize" (to borrow from SNL re Trump), but then you go on to make a ridiculous distortion of my response, which was, like your original argument, about the choice of which techs to research, not about whether any growth techs were entirely unrelated to each other. You claimed that tech use would go from 18 to a mere 4 techs if "allowing outposts to Terraform ... cutting down the whole tree." I countered that many of the growth techs have nothing to do with whether you can terraform outposts.

We both agree that researching Orb Habitation and Bioterror have nothing to do with terraforming outposts, so that is 2.
I would say that the choice to research Lifecycle Manipulation is independent of being able to terraform outposts, so it and its prereq Gen Eng make 4 so far.
Planet Eco, Sub Hab, amd Sym Bio all improve (at least) good habitats and are well worth it just for that and so you'll choose them whether or not you can terraform outposts, making 7
Nanotech Cybernetics provides a very useful ship part, I assume one would research it regardless of terraforming outposts, so it, GenMed and NanoMed make 10,
XenoGen is necessary for Exobots to be able to colonize asteroid belts without already having growth specials, and I consider that important enough to be independent of whether or not you can terraform outposts, so that makes 11 so far

Your starting point was 18 techs, which assumes that people like Gaia and Pure Energy Metabolism enough to research them even if they can't terraform outposts, so really all that seems to leave is Xeno Hybrid which people might not bother with if they could terraform outposts. If they got not so much benefit from Cyborgs then maybe they wouldn't go for PureEnergyMetab either, so that gets you up to three techs that people might drop if they could terraform outposts.

If going from 18 to 17 or 15 (or if we exclude the 2 you never use no matter what, then going from 16 to 15 or 13) seems like chopping down a tree to you, then remind me not to hire you to chop down any trees.
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mem359
Dyson Forest
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Re: Terraform Exobot colonies

#32 Post by mem359 »

Dilvish wrote:You nominally "apple-gize" (to borrow from SNL re Trump), but then you go on to make a ridiculous distortion of my response, which was, like your original argument, about the choice of which techs to research, not about whether any growth techs were entirely unrelated to each other.
You are escalating the confrontation, by choosing words like "(not) even a shred of an argument" and "ridiculous distortion". Think about if you want a shouting match, or an actual discussion. You can have a strong position and opinion without using those kind of inflammatory statements.

If you meant that the other techs have enough value apart from terraforming/colonizing, then that is all you had to say. You didn't have to choose "nothing to do with".

The relationship between techs is part of the argument. If another tech is a pre-req for a particular technology, then that is part of the cost. If I'm going to have it anyways for other reasons, then that is less cost relative to only getting it for something further down the tech tree.
Planet Eco, Sub Hab, amd Sym Bio all improve (at least) good habitats and are well worth it just for that and so you'll choose them whether or not you can terraform outposts, making 7
...
XenoGen is necessary for Exobots to be able to colonize asteroid belts without already having at least 2 growth techs, and I consider that important enough to be independent of whether or not you can terraform outposts, so that makes 11 so far
...
which assumes that people like Gaia and Pure Energy Metabolism enough to research them even if they can't terraform outposts, so really all that seems to leave is Xeno Hybrid
After reading through these comments a few times, I suspect that we are arguing slightly different things. To be honest, I never considered a path that didn't include Terraforming at all, so I was concentrating on colonies only (current) versus allowing outposts to do it (proposed). You seem to be concentrating on the choice of paths: no-Terra (Cyborg) path and the XenoGen-Terra path. My thinking is, if both are somewhat balanced under the current system, outpost Terraforming can easily tip (or topple) the balance.

Three comments:
1) Planet Eco, and Sub Hab are already on the path to Terraforming, so those get you nothing. (Can't have an outpost terraforming without them.)
2) Exobots are nice. But if I didn't get them as a side benefit of XenoGen anyways (so I can colonize and terraform hostile planets, under the current system), I don't agree that makes it valuable enough on its own. That's not a terribly strong argument, but it passes the "shred of an" argument. Same thing for Heavy Troops: nice to have, but spamming ships makes it an easily bypassed luxury.
3) I noticed that you dropped the "other growth techs to colonize" from your argument. That is part of the argument. Currently, a species needs to be able to colonize Poor and Hostile planets in order to get use out of them (either by Terraforming, or using Cyborgs to get a decent population). That means at least XenoGen+Terraform or Cyborgs, either of which requires getting a substantial portion of the Growth tree. Terraforming outposts means I can get by with 4 relatively cheap Growth techs, and still wind up with Good (high population) planets.

I'm not arguing that people won't or can't pick other Growth techs.
I'm arguing that if outposts are allowed to Terraform exactly like colonies (which is a likely first step, as it would be easiest to code), that makes (only) 4 cheap Growth techs a very playable choice, and would make the rest of the tree unneeded. This was a cautionary statement, not an "I'm so angry / flip the table" statement.

(I already mentioned in my previous post that I should've used weaker wording when phrasing my argument. Since "cutting down the tree" is too strong, maybe "easily ignorable" is a better phrase.)

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MatGB
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Re: Terraform Exobot colonies

#33 Post by MatGB »

Heh
My thinking is, if both are somewhat balanced under the current system, outpost Terraforming can easily tip (or topple) the balance.
They're not.

Plus, remote terraforming used to exist (and I believe was only recently finally removed having been commented out for ages), the only reason it was removed was because with the introduction of multiple playable species "terra"forming wasn't as easy to determine and no one wanted the work of fixing it at the time.

For the benefit of clarity: the entire Growth tech tree is likely, at some point, to be redone. At some point sooner rather than later the entire tech tree is likely to be redone. One's a massive task, the other is stupidly huge, so neither is a priority.

I am very confident that we can keep the choices balanced and interesting before we do the complete rewrite, but any argument based around the idea that the current tree is "good" falls over immediately, there've been far too many things added and removed in an ad hoc manner that any balance originally put in there is long gone.
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mem359
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Re: Terraform Exobot colonies

#34 Post by mem359 »

MatGB wrote:For the benefit of clarity: the entire Growth tech tree is likely, at some point, to be redone. At some point sooner rather than later the entire tech tree is likely to be redone. One's a massive task, the other is stupidly huge, so neither is a priority.

I am very confident that we can keep the choices balanced and interesting before we do the complete rewrite, but any argument based around the idea that the current tree is "good" falls over immediately, there've been far too many things added and removed in an ad hoc manner that any balance originally put in there is long gone.
Fair enough

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