FreeOrion

Maybe I'm missing something, but apart from what Aquitaine said - I can't see how the biospheres add anything fun to the game. As far as I can see, it's a system which isn't comprehensible at a glance (requires a computer or a calculator to work it out), and we will find the growth of the biosphere happening in ways we can't comprehend.

Some ways I think it detracts, going back to an earlier post of impaler's:


Countries waged war against existing countries often because they wanted to either take the building blocks (stones, jewellry, etc) or inhabit the cities themselves - because they were already built. I know we're dealing with different races here, but the realism argument can be presented both ways. The ultimate answer is that we can do it the way that makes it more entertaining, then write excuses around it. War should produce spoils for the victor - it almost always has. We should not penalise the colonising of a new place just because it's been inhabited before.

Another though, some people were very strongly against farming and morale when we started this project. It wasn't fun to deal with starvation, and it wasn't fun to deal with rebellion. People don't enjoy things that have a negative affect on their colony. They like to feel that they are moving forward, even if their opponents are moving forward quicker. Biospheres will add another layer of limiting that people will be frustrated about. We already have one population cap, we don't need to add a second. If we don't want colonies to grow too fast, then lets slow the population. Adding bio feels like slowing the population down in two ways (population growth & bio maximum).

Basically, I still can't see what fun this adds. Or if it's to limit some problems (such as those Aquitaine said weren't important yet) why this is the best solution compared with alternatives we haven't considered?[/quote]

It could still work if we have multi-racial populations. If you invade a world that's got a lot of your enemy's bio, you keep their population and still benefit.

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Empire Team Lead

I don't think we've decided on multi-racial population, but we did have a thread that talked about it on the old boards. I'm not really in favor of it -- the only thing I'm interested in is whether or not the race/culture matches your state culture (like EU2), not exactly how many drektopians there are versus Aquitainians.

That should probably be approved seperately.

Since this thread doesn't seem to have a lot of activity and there is no consensus, here's what happens.

The core design team makes a recommendation to the team leaders. Tyreth has the final call, but other team leaders can weigh in on it.

I'll try to get this done this weekend.

Aquitaine

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Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

To Power Crazy - The maximum Bio is equal to size x Environmental Preference, it would be doing asactly as you propose and determining population capacity by thouse 2 things.

To Tyreth - The concourer would ultimatly gain living space from any conquest whial taking it away from their oponent. That in the long run will be a significant advantage but in the short run the agressor needs to pay for their agression both in the raw cost of their military and in the fact that their new territory will need to be developed. If new territory is usable and inhabitable from the get go then it would be made into a productive part of your empire too quickly and encouraging snowballing. Also dont forget that tec stealing (which I asume is going to be in) is a huge advantage for the concouer, often sufficient to compensate for an agressive action wholy on its own. I find most games encourage hyper agression over cooperation by making it more rewarding to concour someone then to cooperate with them, the inverse should be the case.

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Fear is the Mind Killer - Frank Herbert -Dune

Sad to say it, i totally agree with you on that point Impaler.

AFAIK most wars do cost lotsa money in the first few years afterwards. Only the most unusal circumstances, like conquering a country swimming in oil will allow a nation to benefit from its aggression in a short term view (3-5 years).

Lets look at WW2 as an example.

4 winning nations.

The UK got approx 50% of its reparations, but without the Marshall plan it would have been bancrupt after WW2. Lets call it a loss.

France is very similar, even while getting 80% of its reparations.

CCCP took 120% reparations, won severall satelite states, one of them developing in a "relative" high-tech state (GDR) after 40 years, and still never got the war costs in. Oh, and don't forget the odd german scientist they got. Juti Gagarin travelled on german inventions.

The only winner of WW2 is the USA. They not only paid their own military, but invested lotsa money via the Marshal plan ... BUT, they also sold tons of weapons to all allies, got 70-80% of the german scientists (jewish AND nazi). The bomb was developed by german-jewish and nazi-german scientist mostly, and the US-american space programm was also still heavily influenced by those "conquered RP/tech". Oh, and last but not least the USA managed to strike big on the diplomatic field, getting severall trusthworthy allies for 50 years, till they managed to ...., nah, thats off topic .

yes and what did the US do? Nevermind, I know... :'(

K back to business. By making a planet too productive too quickly after conquering it, Warmongering is prefered. However, there must be SOME reason to conquer a planet otherwise i'll just glass it and move on. Because often times in 4X games the whole point of going to war is just to eliminate the competition. Of course the spoils help too, but if my opponent is not a threat to me I'm free to do whatever I want. So we have to be careful to ensure that its worth capturing another planet. But not TOO lucrative.

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Aquitaine is my Hero....

I would say that Biosphere, while not a bad idea in and of itself, is not a good way to ensure that conquest is costly. IF you capture a planet, you'd still probably have a good deal of the native population living there and so you wouldn't necessarily want to tear up their biosphere and put yours in.

I never really liked MOO1's paradigm of "kill everyone on the planet and it's yours" It's much more interesting and fun for me if you're allowed to capture other people's population.

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Empire Team Lead

OK, so back to pop growth and cap. Lets keep biospher though for the terraforming aspect of the game. I think the explanations given are a good point to start from 8in a latter different thread of course) .

I've reviewed the proposals, and considered the recommendations made by the Game Design team.

We will use Drek's version of Nightfish's proposal for 0.2. Also, 0.2 will require the EP's to be coded into a table that is read by the server at runtime, so that it is possible for us to use either Nightfish's original or Drek's modification by changing a single file without recompiling the game. That will allow us to play test which of the two systems (or a third between them) that is best.

Regarding migration, we are limiting it to only encompass evacuation.

For more details, view this URL, which also includes the passed population growth model (which may be reviewed at a later date with play testing):
http://www.drektopia.com/popcaps.htm