FreeOrion

Given the current state of the v0.4 Design Pad, is there anything missing?

I can't immediately think of any major issues that still need to be discussed. Is anyone's pet major feature missing? Any obvious major gaps in how things are intended to work?

It'd be nice if we had some work being done or discussion now on the interfaces for ship design and battle, but those aren't game design issues.

We could have a discussion about how to balance different weapons, defenses, stealth, supply and fuel, ship speed, cost, etc. I'm not sure how useful that would be at this stage, but if there's a lot of interest, we can.

Specific content, including what hulls, parts and techs to include are a content issue, not design, and largely useless to discuss now anyway, and perhaps not likely to produce useful discussion, given how the Tech Tree Design forum worked out (or rather, didn't).

Thoughts?

I haven't really read the v.4 carefully since a much earlier point in it's development.

However, i noticed in planetary resource supply that there is no distinction between tangible resources and intangible ones. It's not clear if this mechanism is supposed to work for just food, minerals, and PP, or research and money too.

I argued in the threads that research and money shouldn't be hindered by the presence of a blockade (though the generation of new money might be), since these two can simply be transmitted as information. I don't remember disagreement.

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In the section on Fuel, there are several possible ways listed to deal with "what happens when a ship runs out of fuel." However my favorite solution is not really listed:

"Ships sitting idle is a system can generate or gather fuel at a slow rate, something like .1 jumps per turn."

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Yeah, i saw that.
But what i'm asking for is, more specifically, the ability to generate fuel, under certain circumstances... i.e. the ability to implement that with certain conditional checks.

It's rather thorough in its list of "maybe"s, and "we might do it this way"s... by the time this is implemented it could easily be assumed that spontaneous generation would have no qualifications, besides being turned "on" or "off" for a ship.

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There is one problem with spontaneous fuel generation as something other than a tech and that is that it essentially allows infinite range.

If a scout ship is exploring, and goes beyond Resupply limits, and runs out of fuel, it sits for say 10 turns... then is it going to jump Back into Resupply Limits?.. No it is a Scout ship.. it will jump farther away, scan the system and refuel for another 10 turns.

Perhaps if the ship also accumulated Damage (Wear+Tear) while outside Range that might be viable... so the Ship can generate 0.1 jumps/turn... But it takes say 5% Damage per turn that it is outside of Resupply range as well

That way if you are out of Resupply Range, you had better get back within 20 turns, and if you run out of Fuel... any Fuel you make will be used to get home before you become Space Debris.

[Now Ships might have a 'Repair store' that allows them to repair a certain amount of Wear + Tear... but that takes up slots in the Ship, so that even a ship modified for max Range could only survive say 50 turns out of Resupply Range]

I don't think it matters if anyone "abuses" the system by jumping further away every 10 turns. It shouldn't do too much to game balance but it removes the annoyance of ships getting stranded.

Well I think it really makes exploration less interesting if you will know the whole galaxy in N turns (N dependent on Galaxy size)

It would be nice if on a large galaxy, that portions of it could remain hidden until there was some reason you could get that far (new friendly empire providing fuel, etc.).

I don't think this is really the place to try to decide exactly how ship fuel should work.

The preliminary v.4 list several possibilities, and calls for the code to support them, so the precise method can be experimentally determined.

I'm just trying to get this specific version on the list.

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Geoff, I'd really like a chance to respond to this post about planetary resource distribution. I hadn't read it until today, but more to the point, i believe i see some issues with the implementation in the preliminary v.4 that will hinder it from meeting the general goals we shared for the concept of blockades and distribution.

If you don't want to unlock the thread, i can start a new one. At the moment, i'm preparing some visual aids to help explain.

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I like the idea of having starlane lengths limit range. IE longer starlanes are untraversable by primitive engine tech.

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Just a quick tip for the production UI. If it hasn't been implemented already I think it would be a good idea in the production queue for the selected items in the list to also have a location somewhere on their queue entry. Perhaps you could display the name of the system (or planet for buildings) where the item being produced is going to show up when its completed. My suggestion would be the space in the upper right of the item's entry on the queue. I know this space is there to accomodate items with long names but most items leave this space empty.

Also there could be a slider somewhere on the item list for the amount you want to produce. At the moment every queued item comes up as "1xColony Ship" or "1xArtificial Black Hole."
I just think the items more likely to be mass produced should have a slider or selector to make "2xCapital Ship" or "5xMark II"

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All starlanes are the same length

??? Uh... no, they aren't. Have you ever looked at the map in-game?

I meant in terms of travel time.