Version .3 Buildings, Research, and such

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

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drek
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Version .3 Buildings, Research, and such

#1 Post by drek »

Obviously, these are first drafts, and not official design documents:

http://home.earthlink.net/~drekmonger/B ... search.png
The research queue.

http://home.earthlink.net/~drekmonger/B ... uction.png
The production queue, based off a tzlaine's idea for a global queue. The idea is for it to look and function almost identically to the research queue.

http://home.earthlink.net/~drekmonger/B ... xplain.png
An explaination of how the proposed production UI works. Many concepts apply to the proposed research UI as well.

http://home.earthlink.net/~drekmonger/B ... ucture.htm
Powercrazy's infrastructure idea, fleshed out by me. Needs work, but I think the basic simplicity of the system should be maintained.

http://home.earthlink.net/~drekmonger/B ... BuildQ.htm
Tzlaine's global build queue, the nuts and bolts codified. Should reserve fleets be local to a specific shipyard or global to the entire empire? I see advantages to both methods.

emrys
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#2 Post by emrys »

UI mockups are nice, and helpfully illustrate the concepts we've been discussing in research and production related thread, I expect them to be very helpful in generating more focussed discussion on nailing down the specifics of the systems.

The Build Queue and Infrastructure documents will probably come in for a lot of stick (not least from me tomorrow morning.), since they kind of assume a lot of things which are still very contentious, but should be an interesting starting point.

vorenhutz
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#3 Post by vorenhutz »

Thanks for the research screen, it's a classic :)

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utilae
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#4 Post by utilae »

The research and produciton queues are very good.

Though as you suggested the production queue will have a problem. Imagine a project that is 100 turns or more. It would get to the point where you would have to scroll down very far to get to the bottom.

miu
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#5 Post by miu »

Goes bit offtopic, but as a reminder. I think this is mentioned on forums earlier, but as there are lots of new people here who haven't read the archieves and someone might bring this viewpoint up.

Now it's quite clear that amount of buildings/structures per planet will probaply be very low, which is good. But by doing this we lose important collectability/player reward feature. People buildt full planets in moo2 because they wanted to see the eyecandy, regardless was it useful or not. And seeing your fullbuildt cities was a reward that you could show off "look, I'm good, all my cities look shiny and populated with lots of stuff that required much work."

FO needs a similar collectable eye-candy reward for the player from the work he's done for his empire. Like palaces in civilization, your imperial starbase, maybe evolving picture of your capital city, whatever. But time to discuss these is much later (0.7-0.8 maybe). Just informing all of you out there that feel output by "oh, only three buildings per planet", you will have your eyecandy reward arranged :)

And on sitenote, suggestion for this low structureslot amount, came bit surprise for me too, but I like it, and it allows much better planetview UI in 0.3.
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vorenhutz
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#6 Post by vorenhutz »

utilae wrote:Though as you suggested the production queue will have a problem. Imagine a project that is 100 turns or more. It would get to the point where you would have to scroll down very far to get to the bottom.
This sort of problem is where you want to use a logarithmic rather than linear scale. It's a challenge to present it in an understandable way though, since most people run screaming from anything resembling mathematics. You could have something like:
1 row for a project that takes 1 turn or less
2 rows for 5 turns or less
3 rows for 10 turns
4 rows for 50 turns, etc.

drek
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#7 Post by drek »

The grid spaces represent Industry or Research. Physically larger projects cost more Industry or Research per turn.

If there's going to be a lot of projects running at the same time, the scale of each grid space would have to be scaleable. Early game, each line might represent 5 points of industry. Late game, maybe 20 or more.

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utilae
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#8 Post by utilae »

@Miu
We could have a range of pics. So you would have pics that range from hardly any buildings to a sprawling city. As your planet builds up, it shows a more populated pic. And maybe we could also include important buildings we have built on top of the pics. So that the player can see that the special buildings they have built are definetly there.

miu
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#9 Post by miu »

@utilae. Yes, I've thought of that, the buildings that you have in your planet will be well visible somewhere in planetview (and forexample, including them to background/horizon of city picture), but that is not a reward enough by what I had in mind. I have few ideas about ways to do this, but more of them when it's timely.
Difference between a man and a gentleman is that a man does what he wants, a gentleman does what he should. - Albert Camus

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Krikkitone
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#10 Post by Krikkitone »

Model 2 Infrastructure proposal

BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE

Each world has a given level of 5 types of Infrastructure for the 5 resources.
(possibly other levels for shipyard or defense buildings but those are outside the current system)

To increase a single type of a world's Infrastructure by one Level, has a fixed cost.
(probably the same cost for each type of Infrastructure but not necessarily.. cost might also be more for less habitable worlds)

The amount of Production that can be spent on increasing a type Infrastructure on a world is a % of the current cost of that type of Infrastructure.
(so that Infrastructure is capable of exponential growth like population.. this means that a colony ship must include some starting Infrastructure as well as Population... This might also involve a rushing option where additional spending could be done above the limit up to some fixed multiple of the limit for a fixed multiple of the normal cost)

On each world, for each type of Infrastructure, it will have a Level and a 'Target Level'

The Level is how much Infrastructure is actually there,

Target Level of a type of Infrastructure for particular world=
Population of the world x
Technology Modifier for that Type of Infrastructure x
Focus Modifier for that Type of Infrastructure


The 'Infrastructure Investment Projects'
essentially randomly goes through the worlds listed as their targets and one at a time invests the maxumum amount allowed in the applicable* types of Infrastructure
*'Infrastructure Investment Projects' should be targetable to types of infrastructure at various 'Degrees of Development' = a range of (Current Level /Target Level), so undeveloped worlds (or 'misdeveloped worlds' that have just had their Focus changed or a tech breakthrough improving one type of infrastructure) would be automatically first in line, unless player wanted to change it making Larger worlds first in line or Only smaller ones. Usually you'd want the small ones because they wouldn't take much anyways.


So, Investment in Infrastructure would move the levels of the 5 types of Infrastructure to their target levels based on the Focus of the planet.


ACTUAL OUTPUT

Actual Output of a Resource=
Base Value x
Racial Modifier x
Environmental Modifiers x
Miscellaneous {government, specials} Modifiers x
Infrastructure Level of That Type x
minimum of (PIR, 1) {this acounts for the fact that any type of Infrastructure needs matching population to get output}

PIR (essentially Population to Infrastructure Ratio) =
Population /
(sum of (Infrastructure Level/Tech Modifier) for each type of Infrastructure)

If PIR is less than 1, then there is some unused Infrastructure that is subject to scrapping. (this would happen the population decreases without a corresponding drop in Infrastructure, ie famine, bioweapons, Or when a highly developed world, ie PIR close to 1, changed its focus. It would start building new infrastructure of the new focus and have to start scrapping infrastructure of the last focus)

Scrapping policy would Probably depend on the population of the world, so that a world hit with bioweapons wouldn't automatically scrap all the old infrastructure, but might just maintain it until the population caught up enough to make it useful.




.....................................

Proposal for Build Queue

Since it seems Drek has converted to the Pre Placement school of thought (except for ships and that's another story),
I'd basically agree with his Idea although I wouldn't necessarily have upfront costs (except maybe as an option)

I do agree there needs to be a 'sink' Project for each Resource. For Nutrients, Minerals and Money it makes sense that it would be a stockpile. For Research, we hopefully will have enough Refinement projects. For Production Drek is proposing Money conversion.

However, I wouldn't make it Money, I'd probably make it some type of thing where the only limit on how many you had, and how fast you built them was the Single Resource. For Production, some type of unmanned ship, or defensive instalation. (but I could probably live with Money.. as long as it con't convert Back to Production)


Otherwise............
I'd propose a 5 Queue system, one for each resource.
You would also have a Master Queue that would have every single project on it (and which would be where the actual game effects took place.)

Changes made in a Resource Specific Queue would automatically be reflected in the Master Queue.. which would then make any relevant changes in a sub queue.

So a Production Queue would have things like Maintenance and Construction of Ships, Infrastructure, Terraforming, Defensive Structures

A Nutrient Queue would have Food, Terraforming, Organic Ships, Stockpile

A Mineral Queue would have Lithovore Food, ..anything that requires Mineral fueled Production could require the Minerals to be put in at the same time as the Production eliminating the actual Mineral fueling of the production..., and Then Stockpile

A Research Queue would have the Theories, Applications, and Refinements

A Money Queue would have Maintenance and Construction of Spies, Military Recruits, Social Effects, Stockpile.

The master queue would have all of those (although it would only be useful for complex multiple resource consuming projects ie, say comparing Terraforming (Nutrient, Production, Mineral) with Fleet Production (Production, Minerals, Money)


The Primary ones would be Research, Production, and Money. The Nutrient one would become important when terraforming was developed. The Mineral one would probably closely mirror the Production one so they could probably be combined.


I think the main difference remaining is the time limit. I'd do something slightly different from his model and make them a fixed investment cost, but with a max investment per turn that depends on the conditions where they are being built (ie shipyard size and shipyard tech for ships, current Infrastructure level for New Infrastructure, Planetary Environment for Terraforming, Imperial Population size and productivity for Social Changes)
Last edited by Krikkitone on Wed Apr 14, 2004 11:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hexxium
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Re: Version .3 Buildings, Research, and such

#11 Post by Hexxium »

drek wrote:http://home.earthlink.net/~drekmonger/B ... BuildQ.htm
Tzlaine's global build queue, the nuts and bolts codified. Should reserve fleets be local to a specific shipyard or global to the entire empire? I see advantages to both methods.
While I can live with global production (i.e. putting all planets' production in a production pool), I still think it's important to produce ships locally for strategy reasons, as I already stated in the thread mentioned above.

Another thing that bothers me are the seperate build queues for planet and empire level. Remember "KISS"? :D

I like the idea of a very limited number of building slots. Although I'd like to see the number of slots depend on current population too, so a few more slots open up as population grows. I suggest figures like:

1 slot per planet size above small (0 for tiny and small, 1 for average, 2 for large, 3 for huge)
logarithmic population bonus like eg.: +1 slot for 1 pop. point, +2 for 5, +3 for 25...

Now the important part: Originally, tzlaine proposed global production to reduce micromanagement. The limited number of buildings helps with that, but I don't see how global production does, apart from making building ships easier. But that's exactly the one thing I'd like to have at local level, because the difficulty of having your fleets in the right place at the right time is what can add a lot to a game.

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