Make ship build speed species-population dependend

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Ophiuchus
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Make ship build speed species-population dependend

#1 Post by Ophiuchus »

What often bothers me is that there is no difference between having a single planet of your good_weapon species vs having your whole empire full of those.

So would it be a good idea to base ship building speed also on the population of the ship-building species
or do you think it would introduce micromanagement problems?


p.s. in detail i would base the build time on the current build time and on the PP cost of the ship vs the sum of the building species' population in the local supply network
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Dilvish
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Re: Make ship build speed species-population dependend

#2 Post by Dilvish »

Ophiuchus wrote:What often bothers me is that there is no difference between having a single planet of your good_weapon species vs having your whole empire full of those.
I am having a hard time reconciling that statement with this other one you made:
Ophiuchus wrote:Being able to build ships closer to operational area is a strategic advantage.
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Re: Make ship build speed species-population dependend

#3 Post by Jaumito »

It doesn't bother me at all. The description for Misiorla implies they don't build ships but are rather given ships to pilot. Due to the way supply and resource-sharing works, I've always assumed ships were built "everywhere" and delivered to the "pilot" systems on completion. Works for me.

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Re: Make ship build speed species-population dependend

#4 Post by Gault.Drakkor »

Ophiuchus wrote: So would it be a good idea to base ship building speed also on the population of the ship-building species ?

p.s. in detail i would base the build time on the current build time and on the PP cost of the ship vs the sum of the building species' population in the local supply network
What are you suggesting?

Is this planet filled with 'speedy builders' who build stuff fast?
Ie species trait: build turns -1 A whatever that takes 8 turns to build else where only takes 7 turns cause 'speedy builders'.
Faster response times when you want to respond to emergency. Still costs same production. For sake of KISS I would say no.

Or: What I can sort of read as a suggestion:
Building with <species> and there are X units of <species> in the local supply.
Effective build time := ƒ(X, pp, build time)
What? No. I can't see how any variation of this that depends on X wouldn't be a complicated mess.

Or: Add more ships to the queue. Five sets of queued ships build five times faster then one set of ships. How many sets an thus the speed up depends on how many of any species are set to production focus in the local supply group. So... suggestion is already in game?


The more I re-read this suggestion the more "what?" I ask.

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Re: Make ship build speed species-population dependend

#5 Post by Ophiuchus »

Gault.Drakkor wrote:Is this planet filled with 'speedy builders' who build stuff fast?
Ie species trait: build turns -1 A whatever that takes 8 turns to build else where only takes 7 turns cause 'speedy builders'.
Faster response times when you want to respond to emergency. Still costs same production. For sake of KISS I would say no.
This does not depend on the population value, so I consider this off-topic. Although having slow builders which take double as long for building would be an interesting tweak for a native species with good attacktroops or weapons.
Building with <species> and there are X units of <species> in the local supply.
Effective build time := ƒ(X, pp, build time)
That was about the fuzzy idea i had in mind; Something like you need 1 population per 10PP production else it takes longer.
I realize now that calculating build time (:= old_build_time + floor(pp/species_amount) ) would be only easy for local production.

If I look at local supply, I would have to calculate the sum of the species' population and also consider the sum of projects that species is actively working on in that supply group. That would depend on the active projects in the build queue, also on build time, order etc. So population would have to be rather treated like an allocatable resource or rather cap the available PP depending on species. We definitely should not do this, at least not before the production queue handling gets cleaned up.

What can be easily penalized is big ship designs. If the ship design cost is too high compared to the amount of the building species in the local supply, double the build time. This would give an edge to small ship designs until the empire expanded the population.
...depends on how many of any species...
No, i was talking about "the population of the ship-building species" i.e. the species on the planet where the ship is build.
The more I re-read this suggestion the more "what?" I ask.
Thanks for your ideas. Didn't expect you to to be telepathic, so I hope i could clarify the "what" with what i wrote above.
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Re: Make ship build speed species-population dependend

#6 Post by Ophiuchus »

Dilvish wrote:
Ophiuchus wrote:What often bothers me is that there is no difference between having a single planet of your good_weapon species vs having your whole empire full of those.
I am having a hard time reconciling that statement with this other one you made:
Ophiuchus wrote:Being able to build ships closer to operational area is a strategic advantage.
Its not a contradiction. Yes, it would weaken some strategies depending on how you count the population.

Count population in empire would weaken
  • catch a single planet with a good_ or great_weapons species and pump out your whole fleet starting the next turn with these
  • building a huge fleet with excellent pilots from a species with low population
(these cases are what bothers me)

Count population in supply group would weaken
  • all of the above
  • get a planet in enemy territory and pump out a lot of combat ships with stockpile (nobody yet did this, im pretty sure)
Count population locally would weaken
  • all of the above
  • colonize a planet close to the border to get your ship operational faster (the case you mentioned from the other thread)
  • colonize a planet in enemy territory, build a stargate fast with imperial stockpile, then let your fleet invade from the inside
I think this is an asthetical question. I dont like the population NOT to matter. Now the situation is very similar to a tech unlock. I dont like to think of people as a tech unlock.
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Vezzra
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Re: Make ship build speed species-population dependend

#7 Post by Vezzra »

Ophiuchus wrote:catch a single planet with a good_ or great_weapons species and pump out your whole fleet starting the next turn with these
A valid concern, and something that e.g. species-empire relations are intended to fix. The species of a recently conquered planet usually won't have the most warm and fuzzy feelings toward your empire, so ships crewed with them have a high chance of mutiny. Meaning, starting to pump out all your warships there ASAP is very likely going to end very badly.

I expect that to address this concern adequately.
building a huge fleet with excellent pilots from a species with low population
This doesn't really bother me that much. The explanation that the number of individuals required to crew a ship compared to the number of individuals making up the pop of a planet is so insignificant, that even a small, scarcely populated planet can easily provide the crews for the biggest navy, is good enough for me.

However, should enough people feel differently about that, and we can reach a general consensus regarding this, the far better idea (IMO) would be to add a (of course very small) pop cost to the construction of ships. A small ship could cost 0.1 pop, a medium one 0.2, a large one 0.5 (these are just completely random and unfounded numbers of course).

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Re: Make ship build speed species-population dependend

#8 Post by Gault.Drakkor »

Ophiuchus wrote:
Gault.Drakkor wrote: Is this planet filled with 'speedy builders' who build stuff fast?
This does not depend on the population value, so I consider this off-topic.
Affect ship build speed - check; population of species dependent- check; depend on value of population( described in body) - not check. 2/2 of the subject 2/3 of parent post. IMNSHO this is unreasonable to consider as off topic. Not what you were considering, or want to consider? No problem.


I will try saying again, most of what you are after is already in game:
If you have 100 Chato in one supply group and 100 Egassem in a different supply group all else being equal the 100 Egassem will produce ships faster then the 100 Chato.
To make the Chato just as fast as the Egassem then change the Chato [[AVERAGE_INDUSTRY]] -> [[GREAT_INDUSTRY]]


I am now certain this is what you are suggesting:
Effective build time := ƒ(population_of_species_in_local_supply, pp, build time)
Again I can't see how any variation of this wouldn't be a complicated mess. If you insist, hint: normalize so you're dealing with consistent units.

Suggested reading(pdfs are easily findable)
Title: The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Author: Frederick Brooks
tldr: Beyond a certain point, throwing more people at a project does not make it go faster.
Vezzra wrote:The explanation that the number of individuals required to crew a ship compared to the number of individuals making up the pop of a planet is so insignificant, that even a small, scarcely populated planet can easily provide the crews for the biggest navy, is good enough for me.
This is what I would prefer.

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Re: Make ship build speed species-population dependend

#9 Post by Ophiuchus »

Gault.Drakkor wrote:Not what you were considering, or want to consider? No problem.
Yes, thats why I say/declare it is off-topic. Dont want to inflate the thread unnessecarily
Gault.Drakkor wrote:I will try saying again, most of what you are after is already in game:
No, just check my list what bothers me.
Gault.Drakkor wrote:I am now certain this is what you are suggesting:
Effective build time := ƒ(population_of_species_in_local_supply, pp, build time)
That or Effective build time := ƒ(population_of_species_in_empire, pp, build time) and pp is also fuzzy
Gault.Drakkor wrote:Again I can't see how any variation of this wouldn't be a complicated mess. If you insist, hint: normalize so you're dealing with consistent units.

...<some classics in software engineering>...
tldr: Beyond a certain point, throwing more people at a project does not make it go faster.
I am quite sure now that i dont understand what you imply. We are certainly not modeling software development in our population mechanics.
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