Colony Buildings: dark legacy?

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Dreamer
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Colony Buildings: dark legacy?

#1 Post by Dreamer »

I looked at the roadmap and forum and found very little information about facilities in general. This may seem like a weird idea but I really need to say it, so forgive me the length of the post... here I go.

From as long as I remember every strategy game was based on building a city/colony that can produce a single product (ship, etc) at the time and gets better by constructing buildings/facilities on it. I have come to the conclusion that maybe this is not the best model, but is the one we are used to. When you look at Moo1 you see that planets grow basicly by themselves and thats because you don't have to worry on what to construct every time. You just have some stats to represent the actual economy and production of the planet and you can simply see how good is a planet via this stat. This also give the game a greater feeling since your planet has millions of factories, people, research labs, etc. and is not only composed of a single city with only 1 market, 1 cinema, etc. Also you don't have to remember the names of a lot of infrastructure and what it does every time you loose one, choose research proyects, trade stuff, etc.

What i propose is a different model. Let your empire construct facilities in a global, galaxy-wide fashion. Let's say that every planet, asteroid or whatever has some avariable space and colonies are just one of the things you can built on them. Have outpost that do something, centrlized training academies, etc.

Let the colony be your factory for economy, farming, influence and the like, nothing more.

Let science be distributed everywhere like it is in the real world. Put some special research labs in space or interesting places only and leave the rest to a single panel for research efforts and costs. Research is generated by your current empire tech and the ammount of money you put in it. Let the private sector put their labs where they want. You put yours.

Let the player construct some shipyards and pay for the construction of ships from a central budget and not by a single planet capabilities (say if you want to make 100 computers you make each country in the world make 1 or you put a single factory in one country and transfer the necesary materials/cash) Anyway, how many of us ended playing 4x games with 5 "favorite" planets and basically forgot the rest for any relevant production.

Specialize a lot the factories. Have secret instalations away from any colony, have great instalation that could do much more than any single planet could do. Have production queues for ships and the like so your shipyards are busy all the time and you really see how much your fleet is costing you. Let a wise player save the money for any purpose he want instead of producing "trade goods" everywhere. Let the player put defenses in empty planets if he likes and cheat an enemy into following him there.

All in all, let the player run an empire and not a confusing and boring collection of planets. This is a lot more fun! "I lost my shipyard in a frontal assault" "I loose the colony but the training facilities for my army are still hidden", etc.

Centralize the economy in a few levels. Runing out of money? Pull back all resources (or some of them) from your shipyards, double the research rate putting more money into it. Galciv has done much of this in his economy management but it can be perfected.

I think maybe I discovered this proyect too late. But these one is an idea I have had for a long time now. Any comments would be great. (and sorry if my english is far from perfect)

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Geoff the Medio
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#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Before making any more major game-system type suggestions, I suggest you read the most recent design document:

http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/Requirements

In particular, look at the focus system for planets, planetary resource production and empire resource pooling, and the global build queue.

Also, please try to refine and clarify your ideas somewhat. The above post is a rather rambling and, IMHO occasionally incoherent barrage of thoughts that don't immediately seem to have a particular single point or logical progression of points. (I don't think this is merely a matter of imperfect English, though I could be wrong...).

Since I can't tell what you're getting at for the most part, I mostly can't tell what is or isn't already in the game or has been decided, either in agreement with what you've suggested or otherwise... (So I suggest you read the Design Doc for yourself to find out...)

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Thanks!

#3 Post by Dreamer »

That was great. I had view all the wiki about "Game design" http://www.freeorion.org/index.php/Game_Design and I had skipped the "requirements" page since I thought that it meant "pc requirements". I'm happier than ever since a lot of what I have said is already there. Most of wich has never been seen in a 4x game of this nature.

The one thing that bothers me is that as I understand it you don't have direct control over the infraestructure of a colony. You still have your production capacity set by an automatic set of facilities (and I assume thaat there can be only one of each).

You can set Focus to boost some or other resource production but you cannot say for example "forget completely about research here and build as many mines as possible". So in general terms we can say that part of the production of a colony goes where you don't want it to go, and you cannot boost one resource production more then the bonuses confered by single buildings (forgetting about other specials for the moment). This is what I wanted to say the first time, so please tell me if It's understandable or not or if I'm totally missing some point ;-)

Maybe if Focus somewhat manage what building are constructed to fill avairiable space on a planet...

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#4 Post by Krikkitone »

The way the economy system is set up, you don't build buildings on planets.
The output of the planet basically automatically grows and you determine what form you want that output in with the Focus.
Each planet always produces a little of everything but a pure mining focused planet should produce a lot more minerals than a evenly mixed planet.

Buildings essentially go on those 5 "interesting planets" there are no buildings on anything else.

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weird...

#5 Post by Dreamer »

Maybe I'm mistaken, but in the requirements I read
here are four types of buildings:

* Common buildings: Although they are specific buildings, the player does not choose to build them; they are abstracted into infrastructure and use the Construction meter, rather than production points.
As I understand it there are "hidden" buildings that the player don't choose, but the planet construct this buildings on its own. I have seen things like this before so it wouldn't be really stange.

On the other hand this:
Focus settings have these effects on max meter values:

* Primary Focus adds + 15 to the selected Max Meter
* Primary Balanced Focus adds +3 to all Max Resource Meters.
* Secondary Specialized Focus adds +5 to the selected Max Meter
* Secondary Balanced Focus adds +1 to all Max Resource Meters.
Don't seem like a real specialization to me, since the value goes from 0 to 100. (don't know why there is a fixed cap). I don't know if this also grow faster some resourse infraestructure... as I said, probably I'm wrong...

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#6 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Re: "Common buildings": IMO this section of the design is rather badly written. I'm not sure what "common buildings" are supposed to be... or what is meant by "they are specific buildings". "Common buildings" might refer to generic stuff like houses and mini-marts and schools and roads, or they might be resource-producing buildings like farctories or farms. In either case, I think this particular bit of text ("four types of buidlings") is left over from earlier designs, and has been superceded or refined by the concept of meters. Aquitaine can perhaps confirm of refute this.

Meters work by slowly increasing over time, to represent an abstracted form of the planet building more farms, factories, etc. You'd never look at a planet and be told that is has "429 farms" or somesuch, though; you'd be told that it has a "farming meter of 37 and a population of 16" or "population 16 is producing 19 food / turn" (or some combination thereof... the UI hasn't been nailed down yet)

Re: meters capped at 100: This was done for UI reasons (we can graphically display a fixed range of 0-100 much more easily than 0-10000000) and to establish a fixed range of meter values, and thus resource production values per planet, for balancing purposes (ie. we know that at the end of the game, the best planets will have meter values of at most 100).

Re: specialization: This is all relative. A planet that has a farming meter of 62 and all other meters around 3 is pretty specialized... (just as much as 620 and 30 or so). If ~5 points in mining, industry, etc. really bother you on planets that are farming focused, then think of them as "bonus" points that all planets produce regardless of what you build or want to do on them... eg. even if all your people have jobs working the mines, they still grow themselves some food in their spare time in their home gardens.

Also, there can be bonuses to meters above the +15 for primary focused on a resource. Various wonder buildings will give bonuses to a particular meter on a planet if it has a certain focus, for example. A farming-enhancing wonder might give bonuses only to farming focused buildings, meaning the effective bonus for farming focus is more than +15. (that's how we can get anywhere near the cap of 100... just +15 max wouldn't be able to do that on its own).

Also, there can be penalties to meter values, as well as bonuses, so some planets could have meter values of 0... eg. a wonder building that gives a big bonus to mining could give a moderate (or big) penalty to farming as well, so your mining planets might actually end up being all mining, and no farming...
I don't know if this also grow faster some resourse infraestructure...
I don't know what you were trying to say there... but perhaps it would help to know that the "construction" meter determines the rate of growth of the "resource" meters, which are farming, mining, research, trade, and industry, which determine (with planet population) how much of the resources (food, minerals, science, money/trade, and industry) are produced per turn on a particular planet.

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Interesting idea

#7 Post by guiguibaah »

Has the idea of the length of time it takes to switch the planet's infrastructure to one specilization (say primary farming, secondary farming - to - primary mining, secondary mining) been discussed?


I think it could be interesting if this length of time could also be dependent on the race you chose. Average races have an average transition time between one and the other. One race could have as a apecial attribute the ability to switch infrastructure almost instantanelously.
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But Still...

#8 Post by Dreamer »

So let{d say that there are no building at all and just meters (with is really fine for me as that was what i wanted). There are still some issues in the requirementes that are not really good exlained...

Re: specialization: This is all relative. A planet that has a farming meter of 62 and all other meters around 3 is pretty specialized... (just as much as 620 and 30 or so)
My point exactly. The thing is that I guess you will never have that difference with the formulae in the requirementes. It says "Meter Change = Current Construction / (10 + Current Resource Meter)" were construction is common to all resouces. So the bigger industry you have the slower it grows.

Since focus only add to the "max metter" and growth is not dependant on it your colony only begin to specialize AFTER every other resource has reached his (lower) cap. The idea I think is that focus should affect where your construction power is going.

About how much time it takes to swich focus. I would just change it and the time is the delay in witch the meters adjust to the new max metters. I don{t belive in any racial trait capable of swiching mines into labs almost instantaneously.

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#9 Post by Daveybaby »

Speed of switching mines into labs could be a technology issue, i.e. there could be construction techs which speed and/or cheapen the process.

However, racial traits could also be a factor. e.g. if you have a dimorphic race vs a homomorphic one. In other words, a species might have several distinct sub-species or 'castes' with differing physical and mental abilities, which are specialised to certain jobs. e.g. like some species of ants or termites. Thus they would actually have to breed new scientists for the new labs. The trade-off for this lack of flexibility might be that the specialised members are much better at their specific role than that of a more generalised race.

Contrast this with humans who can retrain for different jobs (although with some limitiations, and still taking considerable time and effort, so i would guess humans would be considered at a midpoint on the dimorphic/homomorphic scale).

At the far end would be some incredibly adaptable species, such as maybe a robotic race, that can quickly change from one role to another via physical modifications and software upgrades. Or maybe some kind of shape changing race.
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#10 Post by Dreamer »

Like it. In this case the delay should be in the exact event of changing focus and not in the colony. Say focus = "changing to Research" instead of just "research" or have a "focus status" equivalent to the percentage of focus obtained. but still I guess this is a very secondary issue for the game. Moe like a mod.

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Re: Interesting idea

#11 Post by Geoff the Medio »

guiguibaah wrote:Has the idea of the length of time it takes to switch the planet's infrastructure to one specilization (say primary farming, secondary farming - to - primary mining, secondary mining) been discussed?
A bit. drek wanted it faster (maybe ~10 turns) than I did (a lot more). It's somewhat of a balance issue, and dependent on the growth formulas and value of the construction meter, so can be fairly easy controlled for balancing.
I think it could be interesting if this length of time could also be dependent on the race you chose.
Fairly easy to do by given races bonuses or penalties to construction.
Dreamer wrote:The thing is that I guess you will never have that difference with the formulae in the requirementes. It says "Meter Change = Current Construction / (10 + Current Resource Meter)" were construction is common to all resouces. So the bigger industry you have the slower it grows.
Just because growth slows as the meter in question gets bigger doesn't mean you won't ever reach large meter values. Run it through a spreadsheet and point out problems if you disagree.
Since focus only add to the "max metter" and growth is not dependant on it your colony only begin to specialize AFTER every other resource has reached his (lower) cap. The idea I think is that focus should affect where your construction power is going.
Given that the growth rates are rather fast for low meter values, the range where all values are growing at the same speed isn't very long. If you're not focused in a particular resource, you'll have a fairly low cap on that meter, so it won't take long to max out, after which you'll only be growing the focused meters.
About how much time it takes to swich focus. I would just change it and the time is the delay in witch the meters adjust to the new max metters. I don{t belive in any racial trait capable of swiching mines into labs almost instantaneously.
It's a matter of technology more so than racial traits. If you have a huge construction meter, and can thus switch from 80/0/0/0/0 to 0/80/0/0/0 meter values in only a few turns, then you've got an incredibly strong infrastructure base on a colony such that it's able to completely reorient its organization and what it's producing in a very short time. This probably would involve things like Transforming Structures, Force-Energy Structures, N-Dimensional Structures and the like, which are, shockingly enough, theories in the Construction Category...

You'd only end up with the ability to switch focus quickly and efficiently at the very end of the game though... the bonuses for a particular race would be on the order of +5 to construction meter or so, I'd imagine.

Daveybaby's comments are good examples.

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