Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

Past public reviews and discussions.
Message
Author
User avatar
General_Zaber
Space Kraken
Posts: 130
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2008 6:43 am
Location: Iserlohn Fortress

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#61 Post by General_Zaber »

Just a thought, building on pd's realism note, perhaps when you place a ship with a colony pod on the build queue, the default race inside the pod is the same as the planet producing it.

On the colony ship's portrait right click menu there can be an option to select which nearby population to (magically) draw from. It would just give you a pop-up screen with a list of races in the systems within supply range (or infrastracture range etc.)

This screen woudn't need to list individual planets as the population is generated magically anyway so a list of races is sufficient, and would be balanced by the planet's range limitation.
The enemy is retreating! As always, there is no cuteness about them. Dammit

User avatar
Bigjoe5
Designer and Programmer
Posts: 2058
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:33 pm
Location: Orion

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#62 Post by Bigjoe5 »

I think the idea was that colony ships would always have to be of the race of the planet on which they are built, since this adds more strategy to the choice of where to put a shipyard and removes micromanagement from making sure all your races have a colony within supply range of a shipyard.
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

User avatar
General_Zaber
Space Kraken
Posts: 130
Joined: Wed Jan 09, 2008 6:43 am
Location: Iserlohn Fortress

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#63 Post by General_Zaber »

Yeah, I know where your coming from. We've got plenty of time to get this right anyway, but to me it just seems a bit imbalancing if you build all your shipyards on planets of the same race and you only ever get to colonize new worlds with that race.

Then again, on the other hand you could say that if you want to colonize with a different race you have to put in the hard yards and get a shipyard built on one of their planets :wink: .
The enemy is retreating! As always, there is no cuteness about them. Dammit

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#64 Post by eleazar »

Bigjoe5 wrote:I think the idea was that colony ships would always have to be of the race of the planet on which they are built, since this adds more strategy to the choice of where to put a shipyard and removes micromanagement from making sure all your races have a colony within supply range of a shipyard.
I wouldn't call that "adding more strategy". I'd call it diluting the strategy.

Shipyards are supposed to be a rare, significant, expensive construction. It seems artificial that a player has to choose between putting a shipyard in a stupid place, or not having a species available for new colonization. Chances are that most of the time you gain a planet with a new species, it won't be a great place for a shipyard otherwise.

Conceptually it seems silly to that a shipyard can use the resources from many solar system, but can only populate colony ships from the local planet.

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#65 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:Shipyards are supposed to be a rare, significant, expensive construction. It seems artificial that a player has to choose between putting a shipyard in a stupid place, or not having a species available for new colonization. Chances are that most of the time you gain a planet with a new species, it won't be a great place for a shipyard otherwise.
Making it possible to put any accessible race onto a colony ship will require user interface support for making this selection... Can you, or someone else, suggest a way to do this that doesn't involve popups every time the player orders a colony ship to be built? (There are a few options I can think of, but I'm not sure what's best, and any of them will be a bit more complicated, particularly for new players...)
Conceptually it seems silly to that a shipyard can use the resources from many solar system, but can only populate colony ships from the local planet.
Especially if there's no migration system, "realistically" one could argue that shipping around colonists requires specialized ships to do so, which is part of why you have to build the colony ship in the first place. As such, you could only build colony ships containing locally-sourced people, even though you can use the "hidden" empire resource exchange / sharing infrastructure to move around the minerals and intermediate products of ship production in order to use other systems' industry and minerals to generate PP at the colony ship production location.

One could just as easily argue it should be possible to ship colonists from any accessible planet to the colony ship, though.

User avatar
Bigjoe5
Designer and Programmer
Posts: 2058
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:33 pm
Location: Orion

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#66 Post by Bigjoe5 »

eleazar wrote:Shipyards are supposed to be a rare, significant, expensive construction. It seems artificial that a player has to choose between putting a shipyard in a stupid place, or not having a species available for new colonization. Chances are that most of the time you gain a planet with a new species, it won't be a great place for a shipyard otherwise.
All buildings are supposed to be rare, significant and expensive - that's not the point. Are you suggesting that it should be easy for the player to get colony ships with new races? That a player could just capture some fringe world and be able to build a colony ship with its race immediately? The whole point of the species needing to be from the same planet as the shipyard is that its not easy to make new colony ships with a different species on them. Having a new race with which to colonize planets means that you can colonize without penalty on an EP which was previously hostile. You can take advantage of whatever specialization the new race has. This is a significant advantage, and the choice about whether or not to get this advantage by building a shipyard on a world containing a different race should be equally significant. A colony ship containing a very good race would also be a very powerful diplomatic bargaining chip, meaning that having colony ships only contain the race from the planet on which they are built develops not only the strategic element of placing shipyards, but diplomacy as well.

Please explain why you think a player should never have to make the choice between putting a shipyard in a stupid place or not having a new species available for colonization. Getting the colony into a good position for a shipyard by building up defenses and pushing back the enemy empire further is part of the strategy involved in acquiring a new race for colonization.

Edit: Doesn't it seem like "rare, significant and expensive" should apply to getting new races with which to colonize as well?
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#67 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:Shipyards are supposed to be a rare, significant, expensive construction. It seems artificial that a player has to choose between putting a shipyard in a stupid place, or not having a species available for new colonization. Chances are that most of the time you gain a planet with a new species, it won't be a great place for a shipyard otherwise.
Making it possible to put any accessible race onto a colony ship will require user interface support for making this selection... Can you, or someone else, suggest a way to do this that doesn't involve popups every time the player orders a colony ship to be built? (There are a few options I can think of, but I'm not sure what's best, and any of them will be a bit more complicated, particularly for new players...)
I agree having a pop-up every time a ship is built is troublesome. I would suggest two ideas.

* When you enqueue a colony ship, you can't build a "generic" ship, but must choose between a "Bulrathi Colony Ship", a "Psylon Colony Ship", etc. Of course you would only be presented with possible options. This is easily justified, as it's hard to imagine a colony ship that works equally well for sea creatures and lava-world aliens.

* If that's too constraining, then just choose the species at the moment of colonization. Not as realistic, but if there has to be a pop-up, that's the best time for it.
Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:Conceptually it seems silly to that a shipyard can use the resources from many solar system, but can only populate colony ships from the local planet.
Especially if there's no migration system, "realistically" one could argue that shipping around colonists requires specialized ships to do so, which is part of why you have to build the colony ship in the first place. As such, you could only build colony ships containing locally-sourced people...
Yeah, you could, but it wears pretty thin when you consider that you can have multiple species in the same system.

Bigjoe5 wrote:Are you suggesting that it should be easy for the player to get colony ships with new races? That a player could just capture some fringe world and be able to build a colony ship with its race immediately?
That's a legitimate concern. I too would not want the capture of a single enemy colony to allow the capturer to immediately spam a bunch of colony ships of that species.

But i'd deal with the issue in another way. Something like the allegiance and ethos systems i've proposed would deal with the problem in IMHO an interesting way.

Taking over a colony, especially in a protracted, bloody way would tend to make the inhabitants hate your empire, i.e. have a negative allegiance. If you immediately colonized a bunch of worlds with that species, you can expect riots and rebellions, maybe even violent break-away planets in the heart of your empire.

If, on the other hand, the captured colony hated their former empire they would tend to see you as deliverers, and might start out with a high allegiance.

But even so the ethos system makes it difficult to be a successful "collect them all" empire. Just because you have access to a species, doesn't mean it can be happily integrated into an empire-- especially in large numbers. Each species would have certain preferences toward war/peace, industry/environmentalism, elitism/enfranchisement, science, expansion etc. An empire that too often violated the ethoi of too many of its member species would find itself shredded by rebellions.

User avatar
Krikkitone
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1559
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2003 6:52 pm

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#68 Post by Krikkitone »

eleazar wrote: I agree having a pop-up every time a ship is built is troublesome. I would suggest two ideas.

* When you enqueue a colony ship, you can't build a "generic" ship, but must choose between a "Bulrathi Colony Ship", a "Psylon Colony Ship", etc. Of course you would only be presented with possible options. This is easily justified, as it's hard to imagine a colony ship that works equally well for sea creatures and lava-world aliens.
Bigjoe5 wrote:Are you suggesting that it should be easy for the player to get colony ships with new races? That a player could just capture some fringe world and be able to build a colony ship with its race immediately?
.
Actually, those could work together, either the Cost or the Time to build, or both, of a Race X colony ship could depend on the level of worlds you had with that Race (ie Total population of that race, or Pop of world with greatest pop, etc. Probably with a Threshold or two.)

Aussie Mick
Space Floater
Posts: 33
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:35 pm

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#69 Post by Aussie Mick »

Colony ships start empty. When they arrive at a system with population available (e.g. when they're created) you're asked if you want to load up colonists. You can't colonize with an empty ship obviously. Adds a little bit of complexity but if we have shipyards I don't want all the colonists coming from those planets. It's an extra number for each ship and one extra window to code.

[Edit: read talk about having different colony ships for different races, thought it was a good idea so changed the second paragraph.]

If we can refit our ships how hard is it to refit a Bulrathi colony ship to a Psilon colony ship?

User avatar
Bigjoe5
Designer and Programmer
Posts: 2058
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:33 pm
Location: Orion

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#70 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Aussie Mick wrote:Colony ships start empty. When they arrive at a system with population available (e.g. when they're created) you're asked if you want to load up colonists. You can't colonize with an empty ship obviously. Adds a little bit of complexity but if we have shipyards I don't want all the colonists coming from those planets. It's an extra number for each ship and one extra window to code.

[Edit: read talk about having different colony ships for different races, thought it was a good idea so changed the second paragraph.]

If we can refit our ships how hard is it to refit a Bulrathi colony ship to a Psilon colony ship?
mZhura wrote:
pd wrote:
mZhura wrote:just let the player decide how much colonists he want transfer to colony ship when it is built, from 0 to maximum capacity, from a system where it is built. and then while ship travels through other systems it can be uploaded there up to maximum capacity
That does sound like a lot of micromanagement.
in FO all operations with ships/fleets does sounds like micromanagement, especially when discovering new systems and planning battles (i even don't mention battles themselves). so, why do you count making colonies less significant task?
Geoff the Medio wrote:The extra micromanagement would be in the picking how many colonists to add to a ship. If there has to be a pop up menu or some other option / setting to determine how many to put on the ship, it makes the ship building process more complicated. But the real major additional micromangement would come from having to plan the route your ship takes through various other systems, planning ahead to only partly fill at one system so you can get the rest somewhere else, etc. You also have to keep track of which planets your'e taking population from frequently, and which colony ships still need more population, which could get quite complicated if there are more than a few sitting around / moving around trying to get filled up with colonists.

With a fixed population amount, you just build the colony ship and are done, and can send it directly, or as directly as possible, to its destination. Genereally it doesn't matter if there are more than one colony ship in the same location or what order they're built or what order they pass by other systems.
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Aussie Mick
Space Floater
Posts: 33
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:35 pm

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#71 Post by Aussie Mick »

Geoff the Medio wrote:The extra micromanagement would be in the picking how many colonists to add to a ship. If there has to be a pop up menu or some other option / setting to determine how many to put on the ship, it makes the ship building process more complicated. But the real major additional micromangement would come from having to plan the route your ship takes through various other systems, planning ahead to only partly fill at one system so you can get the rest somewhere else, etc. You also have to keep track of which planets your'e taking population from frequently, and which colony ships still need more population, which could get quite complicated if there are more than a few sitting around / moving around trying to get filled up with colonists.

With a fixed population amount, you just build the colony ship and are done, and can send it directly, or as directly as possible, to its destination. Genereally it doesn't matter if there are more than one colony ship in the same location or what order they're built or what order they pass by other systems.
No decision on how many, you fill up or you don't. Sure you still have to decide how to get their via an appropriate world but is that really so hard? You made it at A, you need to go to B, C or D to get the appropriate race, then you can go wherever. Making a colony ship for an alien race that isn't even present where you're making should be harder. Is there a migration system by the way?

User avatar
Bigjoe5
Designer and Programmer
Posts: 2058
Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2007 6:33 pm
Location: Orion

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#72 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Aussie Mick wrote:No decision on how many, you fill up or you don't. Sure you still have to decide how to get their via an appropriate world but is that really so hard? You made it at A, you need to go to B, C or D to get the appropriate race, then you can go wherever. Making a colony ship for an alien race that isn't even present where you're making should be harder. Is there a migration system by the way?
What you're describing doesn't really make it harder strategically to get a colony ship with a particular species, it just requires more management, which isn't the same thing at all.

There is no migration system currently, and as far as I know, there are no plans for one.
Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Aussie Mick
Space Floater
Posts: 33
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:35 pm

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#73 Post by Aussie Mick »

Bigjoe5 wrote:
Aussie Mick wrote:No decision on how many, you fill up or you don't. Sure you still have to decide how to get their via an appropriate world but is that really so hard? You made it at A, you need to go to B, C or D to get the appropriate race, then you can go wherever. Making a colony ship for an alien race that isn't even present where you're making should be harder. Is there a migration system by the way?
What you're describing doesn't really make it harder strategically to get a colony ship with a particular species, it just requires more management, which isn't the same thing at all.

There is no migration system currently, and as far as I know, there are no plans for one.
Well it's strategically slower to make a colony of a race you don't have on a planet with a shipyard. Which means there's a chance for other empires to settle first. However since we have effectively teleporting populations here I don't think it's worth the bother. The population should be taken proportionately from the all the planets with the appropriate race. The effects on allegiance (if that's done by planet) should be averaged on the basis of population taken from each planet.

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#74 Post by eleazar »

Aussie Mick wrote:The population should be taken proportionately from the all the planets with the appropriate race. The effects on allegiance (if that's done by planet) should be averaged on the basis of population taken from each planet.
I'm not sure that there is a need to be so realistic that colonist population is extracted from the rest of the population.

Subtraction could be sometimes problematic, since the player might dangerously harm other colonies by subtracting population from very small colonies. Or in the circumstance that there's only one other colony with a population of one (assuming colony ship have a population of 1), you probably don't want to wipe out the previous colony.

Sure these details could be solved, but i don't think it's worth the player's time to care about where population comes from or worry about the possible problem.

If as i've suggested a colony ship when built is species-specific (i.e. you build Psylon Colony ships, Xerg Colony ships, etc.) it's more straightforward to assume that "raising" the population for the ship is covered in the production of the ship.

Aussie Mick
Space Floater
Posts: 33
Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 8:35 pm

Re: Quick Issue: Colony Ships Population Source and Consumption

#75 Post by Aussie Mick »

eleazar wrote:
Aussie Mick wrote:The population should be taken proportionately from the all the planets with the appropriate race. The effects on allegiance (if that's done by planet) should be averaged on the basis of population taken from each planet.
I'm not sure that there is a need to be so realistic that colonist population is extracted from the rest of the population.

Subtraction could be sometimes problematic, since the player might dangerously harm other colonies by subtracting population from very small colonies. Or in the circumstance that there's only one other colony with a population of one (assuming colony ship have a population of 1), you probably don't want to wipe out the previous colony.

Sure these details could be solved, but i don't think it's worth the player's time to care about where population comes from or worry about the possible problem.

If as i've suggested a colony ship when built is species-specific (i.e. you build Psylon Colony ships, Xerg Colony ships, etc.) it's more straightforward to assume that "raising" the population for the ship is covered in the production of the ship.
Just take the colonists in proportion to the (population-1)/(max. population +1-population). That way most of the colonists come from large close to full colonies.

Locked