FreeOrion

It's on the Optional list, but if we include it, it will be further down the road, when more/most of the stuff governments should effect has been implemented.

Why do you think this is a good idea? Its benefits are not obvious.

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1) It slows down exploration - with the current situation, one can explore a standard 60-star galaxy in 20-30 turns even without researching better sensor techs. Exploring a 100 star galaxy takes maybe 10 turns more and then the scout ships become useless.
2) It makes fuel tanks more important - if you want to explore farther than x jumps from your colonies, you need to research them.
3) It forces you to colonize, in order to be able to explore further.

/All in all, this would be like the limits in MoO1, just a lot more clear in view and in working (the display in MoO1 annoys the heck out of me, 4 parsecs and 5 parsecs and 6 parsecs look equidistant on the screen)/

Speaking of, I believe giving people outpost ships right at the beginning makes colony ships a little obsolete. Why build them if you can build outposts a lot faster?

What do you think of the tech mockups and the specials I posted above? The specials should be okay, they just need some placeholder icons...

What do you mean by "not refueling"?

That they wouldn't regain fuel when out beyond the supply lines, or
they couldn't be refueled ever?

I assumed the latter-- the most obvious meaning of your words.

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Hmmm. I also assumed the latter, since I forgot about the supply lines. I think "beyond the supply lines" would also work, however, the supply lines stretch a bit beyond your colonies....

Anyway, either of these would be fine. We could start with no refueling ever without the tech, and if it proved to be too restrictive for players (note that I set the refueling so that it can be researched fairly quickly), we could switch it to "no refueling beyond supply lines".

Try a 500 star galaxy. even with the best sensors, I often fail to explore the whole thing.

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Not everyone plays a 500 star galaxy, and even smaller ones should be a challenge.

Will some of the specials/techs I did be included in the game?

A bigger troop pod would be OK, but you can add more of the existing pods to hulls, so the need isn't compelling.

I'm not excited about the idea of ships running out of fuel and being permanently stranded, neither am i sure that it is even possible to script.

"Lifeless" doesn't make much sense. Presumably most planets are either lifeless or have life that is incompatible with a given species. Why would robots care anyway? And at the moment, i don't think this is a good time to start making specials that only effect a subset of species.

"No Minerals" begs the question, "then what is the planet made out of?". Since we are probably getting rid of mining it may not have much point anyway.

"Dumb Mists" seems a bit too magical, especially as it is supposed to work on all kinds of planets and robots, plants and lithic species.

"Stable Surface" making some gas giants just like a normal planet doesn't seem like a very interesting use of them.

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As someone pointed out, stable surface also has another issue regarding terraforming and the EP wheel...

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Then maybe make "No Minerals" "No Production".

And about no refueling - why wouldn't it be possible to script? If refueling is obviously doable...

I'll ask again, since there are new programmers on board - would 'no refueling' be doable?

As far as I know, there is no way to stop refueling of ships when the standard conditions for refueling exist. There might be some complicated condition and effect you could do that would exploit rounding of floating-point numbers to integers to prevent the out-of-supply-range refueling (which takes several turns to accumulate a full unit of fuel), but this isn't a intended feature at the moment.

Consider the no-refueling idea scrapped.

I still maintain that negative specials and more techs would be a good idea.

Also, Eccentric Orbit should have the bonus increased, it's negligible as it is. I suggest making it 0.1 Population (I thought I already made such a patch).

Rings and moons (normal, not the resonant one) could also be introduced as specials.

"Lifeless" could model a 'sub standard' environment... ie something that will take terraforming to actually give the world its full bonus (and could allow for some early terraforming)

So if you have a "lifeless" inferno world [probably need new name for robotic species like "incomplete environment"]... it is a special that makes the world hostile/less optimal, until you spend resources to remove it.

Are you reading my mind, sir?

A single post with all ideas being thrown around concerning specials:
1) eccentric -
2) frozen - this gas giant is so far away from the star that it's frozen. Infrastructure reduced by 10 and max pop reduced by 5.
3) variable - similar to Gaia, but changing EP's randomly every 20 turns
4) substandard (formerly suggested as lifeless) - Max pop reduced by 20 until a special tech is researched.
5) stable surface (I still think it might be interesting to have an ability to inhabit some gas giants)
5) rings - Infrastructure increased by 10.
6) moons - Research increased by 0.1 Population.