FreeOrion

"Decision paralysis" is something to be concerned about-- however i'm not sure it is really relevant in a game where you'll presumably have at least as many picks as MoO2 and be able to craft your own species. There are certainly a lot more decisions there. If we're worried about scaring away first-time players, perhaps a few newb-friendly species could be highlighted at the top of the list.

I do agree with Mikko that all other things being equal, i'd prefer to have a high number of possible imperial species as opponents-- as long as they are all still distinctive. But with the way our game is going, a good deal of variety will (hopefully) be provided by the useful minor species an empire may acquire. Trith + Cynos might be significantly different from Trith + Sslith. At least that what i'm going for.

My expectation is that the roster of species will be the most frequently and easily modded/edited part of the game, so nobody will be too inconvenienced whatever we do.

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My preference for having a limited set of very distinctive and interesting default species available does not preclude there being a larger set of native non-player species, or a complicated many-option species customization system. The point is for new players to have a reasonable number of options to start with; modding and optional customization are separate issues that don't affect new players.

I can't be sure, because my binary won't run the latest scripts, but i think the latest production macros that BigJoe produced, while admirably compact and readable, no longer produce the desired results.

For instance Great research is supposed to produce 250% of Average research-- before any tech, building, or special bonuses are added. Multiplying after everything else should provide a value that often shoots beyond the meter's graph. Not that is was precisely calibrated before-- but it was close.

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I recalled you saying something to the effects of wanting to give species a bonus that wasn't "rendered useless by mid-late game techs" or something like that, which was your motivation for wanting species effectsgroups evaluated last. Did you change your mind? I suppose you would have calibrated under the assumption that species bonuses would just affect the base value anyway, though...

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Population based production with many non-species bonuses, and more straight-forward things like ground troops, detection, and weapon strength are different.

A +1 to weapon strength would for instance be very powerful at the start (doubling power), but quickly become negligible. But now that we have with tags or includes, it's really not a big deal to put an effect in each weapon for +25% / -25% picks (assuming weapon power was able to be controlled by effects.) The same thing is less dramatic, but true of ground troop number and detection.

Theoretically i might prefer multiplicative bonus for species production too, but they just get too big too quickly, if you want to put it all on a graph. Also i think the % modifiers are much clearer in situations where you only have one. I don't know how many times Civ promised me +50%, and i got much less due to the arcane order of calculations.

I was lazy in making the string table entries, it should have been in the formate of: X resources per citizen

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If you want, we can just put species effects first again, and things will be exactly the same as they were before, with the exception of food-based population bonuses, which will need to be recalibrated regardless.

I'd like to leave the format of species.txt more or less the way it is, because it makes it really easy to tweak stuff like Ultimate Bonus, etc. Also, knowing what the baseline values are and the extent to which your species provides an advantage or disadvantage relative to that baseline is more useful than just knowing that you're better than other species, but not by how much.

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Sounds good.

After that is there more code you plan to change? I wondering when it will be a good time to ask vezzra to make a new build.

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I already wanted to make a build for r4830, but unfortunately there seem to be some issues, see this thread. I can't produce a stable binary unless this problem is solved

I don't personally plan to change any more code, though I don't know how soon Geoff intends to implement tags.

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It's in progress. A bunch of internal changes need to be done due to limits in how parsing can be set up.

Does anyone have an opinion on whether it makes more sense to tag organic species as organic, or to tag non-organic species as non-organic?

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Tag with actual properties of things, not the lack of a property. This makes future Not conditions clearer (Not Organic vs. Not NonOrganic). It also makes adding additional tags later easier, as there might be Organic, Gaseous, Robotic, Cybernetic, Energy, etc., most of which are "NonOrganic".

I agree.

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Well, problem not really solved, but circumvented, so new binary available.

Since we've come to the place where this matters in the planning of growth, i've pulled together my ideas on the different groups of species that might have differing mechanics for growth, and thus different growth foci. I'm aiming for 3 to 5 different growth foci, and as it happens ended up with 3 or 4. These are listed roughly in order of priority

"*" mark a group that has a unique growth focus

See my wiki page for up-to-date pick ideas


* Organic
"Normal" species.
Growth happens whenever target is not reached. Growth focus increases population target.

* Mechanical/Robotic
Growth only happens when directed, (either via production queue or focus) --otherwise levels remain static.

* Photosynthesizers
Star type largely determines population. A focus can moderately improve pop
This isn't just for plant species. Crystalline and energy beings might plausibly be Photosynthesizers.

Cyborg
No unique focus, but can take advantage of biological and robotic growth foci. Needs both to reach max population.
? Should cyborg pick represent only the mechanical part so it can be paired with either "Organic", "Photosynthesizer", or "Lithovore"?

* Lithovore?
! My concept of how this would work is vague.
for silicon-based / crystalline life
? Maybe all mining techs double as Lithovore population-increasing techs (with appropriate focus)?
? Minerals rich is bonus for population?
? Mining focus halts growth on any lithovore colony? (since if they are exporting it they can't be eating it)

Self-Sustaining
No foci (or tech?) benefit their growth/ population. Population growth is only effected by reaching capacity.
Suitable for energy beings, and other imperturbable species concepts.
Expensive

Last of their Kind / Sterile
Population does not grow under any circumstances.
Useful for novelty minor species, like Stargate's Asguardians.


There it is. If there's a class of sci-fi aliens that doesn't fit into one of these categories, or if you can think of a better game-mechanic for some of this categories regarding growth, speak up.


NOTE: i'm only concerned now with mechanics that have to do with Growth/Population. I don't want to follow the MoO3 method of bundling a bunch of arbitrary picks together weather you want them or not.

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