stpa wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:11 am
wobbly wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:57 am
I'd prefer inhabited asteroids to be rare.
well they still would be as rare as the game-creation-natives_frequency dictates, is just that compared to the number of colonies of any other natives they would have relatively six to ten times more
I am pretty sure that wobbly meant rarety in the sense of having them on few planets even if you encountered them, so the game-creation-frequency is not the issue. as lienrag also pointed out, asteroids should not become "a normal" environment. so an asteroid species has to be either planetbound, or shitty (compared to full blown exobots), or prevent in some other way being a no-brainer (e.g. make them hate all the policies in the game).
One way to make colonization shitty without making the species shitty would be to offer bonus only on a homeworld. E.g. make it low pop and low on resource production.
One way to delay colonization until late game is to give very high stealth to the species (at least on the homeworld).
even more so for gas giants. one intended niche they currently have is ensuring that there are holes in empires so the Sly can go an fill those sneakily. this basically implies planetbound for all other gas giant species.
stpa wrote: ↑Wed Jan 19, 2022 9:11 am
asteroid dwellers of which there are some more upcoming species on the master list. or as i said, make them hard to manage close to each other and thus not really practical to colonize with
the "master list" is just something forum member labgnome invented, its aim (to fill holes in all the environments) is not widely shared, and it includes things which I and others strongly oppose. the list certainly has no authority and I do not think anybody really scrutinized it - it obviously contains things which were strongly opposed in previous discussions with labgnome.
I would also want the normal environments to feel more different than all the same. The only idea is that there is common theme to most of the e.g. "desert" species (e.g. good pilots often evolve on tundra planets).
But there is no clear laid out plan and we are missing a person taking care of that.
So only asteroids and gas giants are special in a meaningful way and they should stay special.
At current state of design: "prevent colonizing all the asteroids (by something else than exobots) before late game" and "prevent all the gas giants to be colonized by something else but Sly before (very) late game"
It is great that you use the list for creating natives, i and i am sure the others find that very inspiring, so please go on. We all love colorful natives
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