Minor races and terraforming

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Iceman
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by Iceman »

Spocks-cuddly-tribble wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 4:06 pm How about a random chance / turn for 'magic terraforming' or building a colony ship.

Increase chance with:

- how few turns till current max pop reached (or start after it's reached, in BotF this is requirement)
- current bio or all tech -level
- maybe personality / habitability level modifiers...
Could be something like this.

Note to self: when magiterraforming, check if another civ is already terraforming the system!
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erazortt
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by erazortt »

Iceman wrote: Sun May 24, 2020 11:14 am Some of the homesystems are canon, but most are somewhat random.
You are correct, that would help a lot with balancing the minors and their tech. It's not easy to come up with 170 homesystems, and balance them. Any help with that is obviously welcome!
I can go over the systems and tweak the planets, preferably next weekend where I have 4 days off in a row. Before that however, I need to figure out for what to look for exactly. So far the energy consumption of their special buildings are apparently important. Perhaps one would say that depending on TC there must be a minumum number of terraformable planets, or so...?!
For instance, I recently increased the energy cost of a few minor race buildings..
Now I see where this 260 for the Trill building came from :wink:
Yep. F12 will lift the FoW. It's in the F9 Keybindings list. Only works for SP, of course. :wink:
Last night I was trying to get the Intel screen to show you info on all the empires - a cheat, sure, but the Intel screen is not yet working anyway. It'd be useful to assess the progress of the AI empires relative to your own. Couldn't make it work though.
Yeah, that intel screen would come in handy. :cool:
Yes, but you want them to progress still.
Yes sure, I thought this TCMultiplier as a fix instead of changes to the construction AI. I had thought the link between TC and labs to be just for the starting number of labs and let the construction AI do its thing from there, but mulitplying out research later in its effect towards the research points per round. But if you "capped the number of labs each minor could have according to their TC" than thats obviously not compatible with my multiplier idea. Your cap and my multiplier where trying to do a similar thing using different ways. There should not be both!
However, why I prefer the muliplier is for what happens after the minor is membered. Because when there is the cap in the construction AI, then the human player could still increase the number of research facilities manually. However the muliplier would always hit. So that a low tech civ, does also bring in less research even if it has many labs.
This multiplier should be seen in conjunction with the idea to have the minors evolve even after joining an empire. So that their research does not only count towards the empires research, but also to their own (hidden) research for unlocking upgrades to their own native buildings. These native buildings would be only dependent on their own research and not on the empire research. So there is this crossover to this discussion (viewtopic.php?f=300&t=3068&p=52477#p52477) and the subjugation multiplier.
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by erazortt »

So to also have an example, similar to the one I just posted in the thread about the subjugation.
Lets say we have a minor of TC4 which currently has 8 research labs of level 1 and will thus produce 200 research points per round.
Saying the TCMultiplier was calculated by (TC+6)/12 these 200 research points will actually lead to only 200*0.83=166 research points per round.
If the minor is membered, the empire will now get 166 points as well as the minor. The points in the empires account unlock empire buildings just like now, and the points in the minors account will unlock the minors native building upgrades.

If the minor was however subjugated than the empire will get only half of these 166 so 83 points but the minor will still get its full 166 points into its own account.
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

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I've been reviewing the code, and as it turns out the only cap to the number of labs of minors was in the HomeSystems.xml file... which were removed. I intended to do what I described, but apparently never got to do it. So, I guess we can/need to start over. :wink:

BTW, the multipliers used for calculating their initial tech levels are:
TC6 1.0
TC5 0.9
TC4 0.75
TC3 0.5
TC2 0.2
TC1 0.0

One issue I see with this though. The player will not have feedback on how many RPs are actually being generated, in the System screen... I need to implement this in another way. Tomorrow, it's late now.
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by erazortt »

Iceman wrote: Sun May 24, 2020 6:38 pm One issue I see with this though. The player will not have feedback on how many RPs are actually being generated, in the System screen... I need to implement this in another way. Tomorrow, it's late now.
Yes but the RP calculation is already now convoluted with the game speed. So the user does already now not get a reliable feedback on the number RP generated compared to the number shown in the research screen.
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by Iceman »

True. I'm not even sure I can actually display the modified value in there.

Re minor race homesystems, namely pop vs tech level, we also need to try to make them somewhat balanced in the sense that we should not have the high tech minors be very powerful (large systems not only allow more labs but also more industry/credits and everything else) and low tech minors be rather worthless.
Large systems for LT minors do have the advantage of potentially generating more credits; with the research modifier, the research thing is taken care of.
HT minors shouldn't probably have large homesystems, so as to not provide both research and credits in larger amounts.
All in all, maybe only a few homesystems need some tweaking, after the research modifier is implemented. It's almost done, should release a patch soon for testing.
Sorry if this seems a bit chaotic, just thinking out loud. There's too many things in my head right now.
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by erazortt »

Iceman wrote: Mon May 25, 2020 8:21 am ... and low tech minors be rather worthless. ...
HT minors shouldn't probably have large homesystems, so as to not provide both research and credits in larger amounts.
Yes that is also very true.
That sounds like a really nice idea: LT minors are good for credits HT minors are good for research.
HT minors will thus need to have smaller system sizes but this in general also comes with low research. So for the HT civs to actually really be HT they all need to have some special building artificially increasing their reseach/intel. Which I think all HT minors already have in some way. :grin:
So what needs to be done is to make sure that LT have larger systems and HT have smaller, but still big enough to power thier buildings (thinking of the trill on 160 max pop and with their 260 energy consumption for their building)
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by Iceman »

This is why it's important to only allow minor races in an empire to have access to PFs of their own level - previously, Capella could upgrade to/build top tech PFs by the dozen which was ridiculous.
With the TC multiplier, on LT minors it's really innefficient to build labs, even a bunch of them. On HT minors it's much more efficient, and even a lower number of labs (but higher tech and with a higher TC multiplier) will outproduce LT minors. That is, say 5 Bynar high tech labs are better than 12 low tech Capellan labs.

BTW, re the multipliers I used for TLs, TC1/Primitive minors have a multiplier of zero. In this situation it would mean that Primitive minors will contribute exactly zero RPs to the empire - so, there would be no use in building any labs there. Which I think is fitting. :?: Same for Intel, ofc.
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

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erazortt wrote: Mon May 25, 2020 10:51 am So what needs to be done is to make sure that LT have larger systems and HT have smaller, but still big enough to power thier buildings (thinking of the trill on 160 max pop and with their 260 energy consumption for their building)
That value was doubled (and a few others), we can revert that change. I just didn't want them to provide a good bonus *and* a bunch of research. Especially when the bonus is research-related... same for intel.
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by erazortt »

Ok, but I think its actually enough if we say that HT civs do usually get small systems. I would leave some randomness there however as well.
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by Iceman »

:up:
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by erazortt »

Iceman wrote: Mon May 25, 2020 11:50 am With the TC multiplier, on LT minors it's really innefficient to build labs, even a bunch of them. On HT minors it's much more efficient, and even a lower number of labs (but higher tech and with a higher TC multiplier) will outproduce LT minors. That is, say 5 Bynar high tech labs are better than 12 low tech Capellan labs.
What TCMultiplier have you ended up using?
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by Iceman »

I have both in the code (one of them commented); my table:

Code: Select all

TC6 1.0
TC5 0.9
TC4 0.75
TC3 0.5
TC2 0.2
TC1 0.0
and your formula:

Code: Select all

(TC+6)/12

TC6 1.0
TC5 0.92
TC4 0.83
TC3 0.75
TC2 0.67
TC1 0.58
The difference is basically in the lower TCs, with yours being more generous.
The deciding factor should probably be TC1: should Primitive minors produce any research, or not?

I'm almost done with the changes.
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by erazortt »

Iceman wrote: Mon May 25, 2020 5:20 pm I'm almost done with the changes.
awesome! :grin:
should Primitive minors produce any research, or not?
So these civs will not be able to evolve at all, at any time in the game. That would be extreme! But I mean, yeah sure why not, would be something new! However, I really think that the user (and AI) should not be even able to even build the research labs in the case the multiplier is as low as 0. These civs should really have some huge systems, like at least 350 or so. And even for the TC2 civs with 0.2, this is so low I doubt that in effect it is much better than 0. Perhaps this could be 0.25 instead.
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Re: Minor races and terraforming

Post by Iceman »

They're *Primitive* :wink: But yeah, in the context of a game, it can be silly, and that's why it's up for discussion. Didn't do the math, but it's possible that even with your values they might not go beyond TL2 in the course of a game.

The patch is out, but this needs to be tested - I didn't have time for that (I usually test everything before commiting). I used my table, to check if it is too restrictive - if it is, we'll switch to your formula. Not that I think the table is better than the formula, not at all, it just seemed more "natural" to go from more restrictive to less restrictive, in terms of weighing both approaches.
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