FreeOrion

Edit: Here is a link to the most recent content updates. /edit

Some ideas about strategic expansion can be found here.

The Construction tree's main branch involves techs which assist in expanding further away from the main empire to find habitable planets, whereas the Growth tree and the lesser branch of the Construction tree have techs which assist a more concentrated style of expansion, making do with nearby planets, and improving them rather than finding already-good planets further out.

The Learning tree also supports this. One side has interdependency with the Growth tree and the lesser branch of the Construction tree, and the other side has interdependency with the main branch of Construction.

Techs which are associated with the more concentrated style of expansion tend to have somewhat lower overall research cost, but longer research times than those associated with the other style. The justification for this is that the player who is going out further to get his first colonies will need those techs sooner, since his first colony might very well be out of initial supply range, and unable to contribute to/take from stockpiles without the necessary tech, whereas the player who is colonizing very near to or in the same system as his homeworld will be able to at least begin develop those colonies even without the initial Growth techs, and will be able to divert more of their initial research capacity towards other trees. So in this sense, the Construction player has access to more rare resources and planets which are already very good, but the Growth player is able to make do with seemingly bad planets, and has immediate advantages researching other areas of the tree.

The Observatory building has gone through many changes in function since I started revising the tree. The latest - and so far the best, IMO - function is to permit basic visibility of all the stars in the galaxy. A reasonable and potentially very useful function for an observatory. Trouble is though, that this is currently done by reducing their stealth to 0, which means everybody can see them. There should probably be (and will probably need to be, particularly for v.5 when players can use diplomacy to reveal objects to one another) a way to use effects to give visibility of an object to a particular empire, even when that object would normally be invisible under ordinary detection rules.

Also, Artificial Black Hole currently does not have a home. It is sitting in the Construction tree without any prerequisites. Solar Rejuvenation and Solar Acceleration have been merged and moved to Learning, on the side that intertwines with Growth, but I haven't yet found a really good place for Artificial Black Hole. Since black holes are epic, something better should probably be done with this concept, for example making Artificial Black Hole into a theory and having various apps for it, such as a black hole related weapon, a way to transform stars into black holes and a way to create black holes from nothing.

Better suggestions for the Megalith than what I've done with it are welcome.

I didn't think a construction or detection bonus for the homeworld made a lot of sense from either a gameplay or a conceptual perspective, so I removed them. At the start of the game, Imperial Palace is necessary for 1 starlane jump resource exchange.

Anyway, here are the relevant text files:

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

I like this. However, is it possible to make the stars visible, but not the starlanes connecting them? Like it was before stealth/detection has been introduced? Knowing all stars and the starlanes seems too powerfull. Seeing just the stars, their color and location, but not the clear path how to get to them allows for a "guided exploration". I'm assuming here, that in future the planet types most likely found in a system can to some degree be predicted by star color.

When a star is at basic visibility, the starlanes connecting to it are invisible. You need partial or better visibility of a star to reveal the starlanes. If an object has stealth 0, everyone in the galaxy has at least basic visibility of it, but it must be within detection range in order to gain a higher level of visibility (at least, that's my understanding of the visibility system). At any rate, the current Observatory doesn't reveal all starlanes, and I plan to keep it that way in the future (at least for the most basic type - there could perhaps be a more advanced version later in the game which gives partial visibility of all systems, and therefore reveals all starlanes).

You are correct that planet types can be guessed by star colour. This is why the observatory is where it is - in the side of the Learning tree associated with the Construction category, so that a player will be able to spy out good potential systems from afar and reach out to claim them.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Basic visibility of systems is also given to players who have partial or better visibility of adjacent (by starlane connection) system(s).

For the Observatory building, consider having it only act on one system each turn (picked randomly).

Also, there could be buildings that increase the stealth of nearby systems by just enough to counteract the stealth penalty of the Observatory, allowing empires to keep the systems near them (or not near them) hidden.

Unless the universe generator has been reworked since i became mostly inactive, this is how it is supposed to work, but it actually doesn't. See this post

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agreed.and that is even better.again agreed.

I don't see how that's possible with the current effects system, or why it's superior to giving basic visibility of all stars to the owner empire.

Am I correct in assuming that the player will still be able to see these stars after they are no longer "visible" due to the "memory" of known objects? If so, is this just a way of making the effect more gradual? Also, wouldn't having a patch of galaxy without any stars due to one of these counteracting buildings be more conspicuous than just letting the observatory detect the stars?

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

Yeah, it does for me - build 3258, which might be outdated already though.


To realize there's an empty patch, you would first need to have all the surrounding stars revealed, which would take some time. Even if you know there is a hidden empire in such a patch, you wouldn't know what exactly is waiting for you. I actually really like this idea.

Have an effect that uses the NumberOf condition to pick one of the systems matching some other condition.


Eventually... I'm still making the necessary changes for memory to work properly. Presently, what is sent to players is a set (technically a map) of objects that includes both objects visible on the current turn, and the latest known versions of objects visible on previous turns. The UI needs to be updated to properly display the objects that aren't visible on the current turn, and the AI probably doesn't have access to the objects that aren't visible on the current turn.


Yes. Seems more fun / interesting than giving it all away, and continually updating it, every turn.


Perhaps, but you don't have to put just one counteracting building centred on your most valuable system(s)...

And if the systems revealed by the observatory are added one per turn, it won't be immediately apparent that there's a gap in the view until a good fraction of the systems are revealed and the missing area is outlined.

I tried doing that, but the number condition appears to work the same way whether I put it in scope or activation. That is to say, the scope condition works "if there are between X and Y objects in the universe that is a system" (emphasis mine) (I should have mentioned this before, since I had assumed that was what you had in mind and I had tested before posting).

Yeah, probably, but it seemed like it wouldn't be very useful if its so gradual, though I could probably use multiple effects groups with different activation conditions to reveal a number of stars proportional to the number of stars in the galaxy. I also was thinking that it might hit some stars multiple times, slowing the overall revelation process significantly. I don't think that the VisibleTo condition would fix this either, unless the condition could perhaps be modified to specify the level of visibility the empire has of the object, including "memory" of the object.

On the other hand, the subtle, yet annoying lack of any stars appearing in a nearby area would probably encourage the player to go explore there with his scouts.

I think the real reason the counteracting building isn't necessary is that its not really a bad thing if your opponent has basic visibility of your systems from far away. It doesn't reveal your location at all. If there are buildings which increase system stealth (and I believe there should be), they should also prevent visibility of starlanes leading to them and propagation of visibility along adjacent starlanes, so that a scout exploring a nearby part of the galaxy wouldn't be able to detect the system unless it actually entered an adjacent system. Probably only useful for empires holed up in a corner of the galaxy going for tech victory, or some really crazy kind of espionage victory where nobody even knows you exist.

Also, it looks like I was wrong about how the observatory works currently. When I tested it before, it didn't show all the starlanes, but perhaps I upgraded my FO version since then. Hopefully it can be made to show only stars, one at a time, not repeating any stars, and no starlanes.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

NumberOf and Number are two different conditions.


The rate can be varied a bit, if necessary. A single building that reveals the locations of all or many of the systems in the universe is a rather drastic change, and something between that and nothing is probably good to have.


Depends on the galaxy shape... it might not be obvious that there's a hole in the revealed stars.


Revealing system locations does, as you note, encourage exploration of those systems, even if a player doesn't know they're populated.

Also, there could be effects that make systems less stealthy only if they contain objects of certain types or with certain owners. Counteracting effects of this sort would be important.


Starlane stealth is something I've thought about, and would like to have, though don't plan to add soon. One problem with it would be how it would interact with adding or removing starlanes, which I'd definitely like to add. If a player sees a starlane one turn, and then another turn doesn't see it, but still has the same visibility level of a system connected to that lane, it could be because the lane was made invisible, or because the lane was destroyed, and there's no obvious way to tell the difference. In that case, what should the UI / player assume?


I don't see repeating of stars as a huge problem. The rate of useful information being revealed would fall with time, as a larger proportion of the possible targets are already revealed... This doesn't mean it's useless.

Currently, in my version, memory of individual systems revealed by this effect are not remembered by my empire, but I assume that problem will be solved as more code for empire memory gets added.

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Warning: Antarans in dimensional portal are closer than they appear.

I have just received build 3274, and the observatory seems to work like it was originally intended. Nice work, both of you!

On line 1434 of buildings.txt, you've misspelled Asteroids as Asteroid which is causing parsing errors.

in my files it's line 1442. but i guess error report might be addressing to line 1434 where declaration starts