Plans for 0.4.5

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MatGB
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Plans for 0.4.5

#1 Post by MatGB »

Thought it worth discussing, now that 0.4.4 is almost in the bag, what people have in mind for the next release cycle.

Some of the stuff I'd like to see worked on, in no particular order, and including stuff I can do myself easily, stuff I'd need help on, and stuff that's completely beyond me but would be cool ;-) :
  • Check the stealth stat for inhabited worlds for consistency, using the same basic setup I applied to ship hulls, so that stealth is easier to explain and we no longer need "Inherent 0.10" stats. I might need some help with that as the various places species stealth stats are defined is boggling. Plus
    • try to make stealth-as-a-strategy viable but not overpowering
    • while keeping the current detection strength paradigm, introduce parts and effects that can vary it strategically in a balanced way
  • Rethink the way Good and Bad population bonus is applied, and possibly rebalance the populatino growth tech tree in general
    • It shouldn't be more optimal to colonise a Terran world with Scylior than Humans
    • Egassem are terrible in part because of the way Bad Population works
    • Self Sustaining has a few issues, and is applied at a different time to the Growth specials
  • Balance the costs of various colonising/planetary manipulation effects
    • Artificial Planet is generally not a good investment, perhaps introduce sub types involving automatically populated with Exobots or with the Gaia special
    • Consider whether the Colony Upkeep modifier is at the right level, and specifically whether it should be applied in full to Outposts
    • Possibly even redo the colonising mechanic, it's been discussed before that colonising within supply could be redone to negate the need to build ships &c
  • Continue tweaking and improving the overall balance of the hulltypes, research costs and parts
    • Armour parts, in particular, might be undercosted
    • Shields are arguably both too powerful and too expensive, perhaps refine both the shield levels and costs a bit (and possibly have species effects on it expanded from the way Acirema currently work)
    • More work on core parts to expand variety, we're up to three usable bits of kit now, more needed
  • Rework Damage Control and ship repairs in general
    • Field repairs should be less powerful, especially for heavily damaged ships (possibly 20% max of current structure not total structure per turn)
    • Possibly full repair in one turn should only be viable at a shipyard containing the buildings necessary to build the ship
    • Possibly introduce a damage control internal/core part to allow some, but not full, field repair
    • If field repair is significantly nerfed, then the robotic line self repair/fleet repair bonuses will need rebalancing
  • Introduce some sort of tutorial system, possibly linked to Sitreps timed to go off at key points, with links to a Pedia section
    • Possibly introduce some scripted "goals" using the galaxy generation scripts
  • Diplomacy—at the very least have more than one scripted offer peace option and have it tied to both AI aggressiveness and species type in some way
  • Improve behaviour of AI empires at end of life
    • possibly introduce a "surrender" or "alliance" mechanic so when a homeworld is lost remaining forces either surrender to an aggressor or ally with/are gifted to a nearby non-aggressive power?
    • Have some system where AI empires all at war with the most powerful player start working together/form alliances etc
    • Basically, make the end game a bit more of a challenge to maintain player interest
  • Make the Victory Conditions part of galaxy generation and options
    • Have whether the Experimentors exist and their power level be a separate choice
    • If chosen, Experimentors should be placed roughly in the middle of the galaxy and before/with AI homeworld selection
    • Make sure there is a Sitrep for conquest victory, decide what the parameters should be (all populated worlds?) and make all three sitreps work in multiplayer
Like I said, all stuff I, personally, would like to see, none of which absolutely has to be done but much of it would be cool.

Another observation: the gap between 0.4.4 and 0.4.3 has been the longest gap between stable releases since the release of 0.3.1, and we all know the improvements over the last year have been impressive, we knew this in January when it was discussed trying to wrap it up once the big projects were completed. I know that both universe generation and the work with Cami on the backend effects processing/threading has been a massive project, but I think given 0.4.3 is still getting 400+ downloads a week, it'd be good to try and aim for a much smaller gap this time. That is, of course, not my call at all but I thought it worth mentioning.

I know Dilvish, Vezzra and others have mentioned ideas, some of which coincide with stuff above (or are contained above, much of this comes from discussions here), what have others got in mind or in the works?
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Vezzra
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#2 Post by Vezzra »

I actually do have quite some thoughts/ideas concerning 0.4.5, but currently I'm busy getting 0.4.4 done. Once the final release is up, I'll add my 2c :D

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MatGB
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#3 Post by MatGB »

Vezzra wrote:I actually do have quite some thoughts/ideas concerning 0.4.5, but currently I'm busy getting 0.4.4 done. Once the final release is up, I'll add my 2c :D
yup, but apart from bughunting I'm done for 0.4.4, and Dilvish and I started talking about stuff we could do in the UI thread so I thought putting it all together rather than just having it in my head made some sense.

Edit: where did my smiley go? Ah well. :mrgreen:

:lol: :lol: 8) :shock: :D
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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#4 Post by Geoff the Medio »

-Modifiable game rules: cheap / expensive techs, cheap / expensive ships, cheap / expensive buildings, toggleable victory conditions, always war, always peace, limit X colonies / ships per empire, fast / slow fleet movement

-Battle simulator, using already-mostly-implemented saving and restoring of ship designs

-Already basically functional pedia search

-Update various dependencies / SDKs

-Ogre -> SDL transition?

-Text (but zipped) serialization instead of inter-OS-incompatible binary serialization

-Replacing log4cpp with boost.log or similar

-Species-Empire interactions depending on game history and species preferences, including only vaguely-defined consequences of species not liking an empire and "happiness" of planets

-Bonus research from exploring different star and planet types or specials (KSP inspired?). Might involve a research-dedicated ship part

-Strategic resources that are needed for or make cheaper various producible or researchable things

-Reworking refinements from separate parts to upgrades of existing parts

-Ability for ships to produce RP and PP (already implemented, but needs content designed)

-Ability for ships to be production locations. With RP and PP generation, could allow nomadic empires without planets.

-Bombardment mechanics need substantial attention

-Fixing remaining post-combat visibility issues

-Hook up tinyXML so that SVG files can be read in, and made displayable with a StaticVectorGraphic control. Would also be useful for custom / configurable empire flags / symbols.

-Diplomacy? Probably needs species-empire interactions to work.

-Tech sharing agreements, or automatically for adjacent empires

-Reworking supply propegation so empires' supplied areas don't overlap (similar to Civ game borders)

-Send diffs with turns updates instead of full universe state

Those would be more than enough for v0.5. A few can be done for a v0.4.5 release.

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adrian_broher
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#5 Post by adrian_broher »

I just copy my comment from the previous 'Plans for 0.4.4' like thread because they are still valid:
adrian_broher wrote: Those points are not discussed in detail, but where mentioned in some threads or personally I would like to contribute to:

Proper linux releases and installations with cmake
Better window management (snap to display border, snap to each other, os window resize should affect the internal GiGi windows and other bad behaviours)
Saving and restoring window layouts
Proper widget layout for fitting translations
Proper translation interface utilities or replacing the current implementation with gettext
I consider the linux installations as pretty much working. What's left over is the release of proper tarballs.

Everyone who follows the SVN repository should have seen that the whole window management is currenty in progress.

Also the common and parser libraries need to go into a dll.

Finally I can take care of the translation system. Be afraid, be very afraid. :3
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vincele
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#6 Post by vincele »

adrian_broher wrote:Also the common and parser libraries need to go into a dll.
Is this already done or a diff between linux and windows builds ?
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#7 Post by adrian_broher »

vincele wrote:Is this already done or a diff between linux and windows builds ?
It's a Windows only issue, hence I wrote DLL and not shared library which would include the other platforms.
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#8 Post by Chriss »

Geoff the Medio wrote:-Ability for ships to produce RP and PP (already implemented, but needs content designed)
-Ability for ships to be production locations. With RP and PP generation, could allow nomadic empires without planets.
I've seen some research and production parts which were initially unproducible in the script files. But they did not do anything when I enabled and built them... Could you give me some pointers? I'd like to play with that. It sounds interesting.

Another point: Adding Fighters and Missiles to the battle system.
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#9 Post by MatGB »

Things I meant to add:
  • Rework bioterror and genome banks so that
    • all species are vulnerable, organics more vulnerable
    • genome bank does something and doesn't make you completely immune (perhaps a per-species population bonus and half damage from bioterror per species?)
  • Rework the current death spore & later bombardment parts to again work on all species in different ways
  • Get someone to redo/update the design screen art for a few hulls, Robotic, Nanorobotic and Sentient specifically
  • Rework the way Stargates work to require no buildings but with a massive penalty on use
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#10 Post by mileser »

As I mentioned in another thread awhile back: Pirates... Arghh! :twisted:


Also, further reduction of micromanagement - including more buildings/projects that work empire wide rather than being required on each planet/asteroid belt you want the effect applied.
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#11 Post by Sloth »

Geoff the Medio wrote: -Species-Empire interactions depending on game history and species preferences, including only vaguely-defined consequences of species not liking an empire and "happiness" of planets
Yay! Happiness and Allegiance! :D
mileser wrote:As I mentioned in another thread awhile back: Pirates... Arghh! :twisted:
Pirates probably need the Random Event feature implemented which is waaay down in the Roadmap (according to the old Roadmap in the wiki).
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#12 Post by Dilvish »

Sloth wrote:
mileser wrote:As I mentioned in another thread awhile back: Pirates... Arghh! :twisted:
Pirates probably need the Random Event feature implemented which is waaay down in the Roadmap (according to the old Roadmap in the wiki).
I don't recall any details about the Random Event feature, but although I can imagine pirates might fit nicely with it I doubt that they'd necessarily have to wait for it. It seems to me that some kind of pirate activity could be a possibility for 0.4.5, particularly if someone expands a bit on the core nomad empire idea (for which Geoff has been putting in support features) as pirates.
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#13 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Dilvish wrote:I don't recall any details about the Random Event feature...
tzlaine had some plans about "random events" at some point, but never explained what he meant by that.

To me, "random events" sounds like making some effectsgroups that have a random chance of happening and that cause some effect on the game universe. This already happens for things like ion storm spawning, some monster behaviours, probably various aspects of experimentors...

If it's meant to be a more involved system involving player responses to prompts or choices, then it seems more a matter of adding such interactions and tracking of "quest" type state information, independent of any "random" aspect.

Incidently, the roadmap could use some updating...

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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#14 Post by MatGB »

I might possibly have been looking at the roadmap before starting this thread and thinking "this is horrifically out of date, let's find out what's planned now" ;-)

With Pirates, I'm thinking having some sort of random monster spawn that has a sort of psionic snowflake effect and a special with relatively good stealth or similar that acts as a pirate base.

I would love to have the ability to capture ships, make ships surrender, etc in a meaningful way, the first part of that would be pirates praying on shipping (by basically disrupting supply lines) and having bases pop up in random annoying places—crucially, in systems X distance away from empire ships, but not planets, so they can hide in asteroid fields in the middle of your empire, etc.

I have no concrete plans as yet and, let's face it, if someone else scripts something better, cool. Vezzra's mentioned the python universe generation has or will have an API for quests and similar, no idea how that works, finding out is also part of my plan fairly soon :-D
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Re: Plans for 0.4.5

#15 Post by Vezzra »

MatGB wrote:Vezzra's mentioned the python universe generation has or will have an API for quests and similar, no idea how that works, finding out is also part of my plan fairly soon :-D
To be precise, what I said was that (emphasis added):
Vezzra wrote:Well, when I started to implement scripted universe generation I already had the vague plan in my mind to make the entire interface available not only for universe generation, but also for Python scripts which can be executed at the begin and/or end of each turn. That would give tremendous flexibility for creating things like scenarios, and would also provide the means to implement such things like "quests".

As the interface is already in the server, it shouldn't be too hard to add something that use it to execute Python scripts every turn.

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