Design: Mineral Richness

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drek
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#16 Post by drek »

So it's settled.

Space-Bucks are now called "Aquitaine Units." AU for short....er wait a sec. Did Aquitaine have more to do with Moo3's development then he's letting on?

Very fishy.

Aquitaine
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#17 Post by Aquitaine »

If someone wants to come up with a little icon that represents a region in southwestern France, we can call them Aquitaine units. :)
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!

Tyreth
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#18 Post by Tyreth »

And I thought Aquitaine was an original name :)

http://www.visit-aquitaine.com/

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#19 Post by Tyreth »

Just was thinking about your idea of making mineral richness a special, drek.

I didn't like it, because I saw specials as something 'extra', that weren't a part of the initial plan or something big and important. Then I realised, we could make gravity as a compulsory special. We could describe many undecided qualities about planets through specials.

What I'm getting at, is the concept of specials could be a way for modders to make the game like they want it - assigning special attributes to planets that we didn't consider as part of the core game.

drek
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#20 Post by drek »

nod,

good idea Tyreth. Especially true since we probably need a routine to go through all the planet specials (for each planet) and give them a time slice to work their magic.

Actually, a bit off topic, but I was wondering about how to implement specials and technologies--both features have wildly divergent effects. It would be really messy to special case each special/technology.

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utilae
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#21 Post by utilae »

tyreth wrote:Just was thinking about your idea of making mineral richness a special, drek.

I didn't like it, because I saw specials as something 'extra', that weren't a part of the initial plan or something big and important. Then I realised, we could make gravity as a compulsory special. We could describe many undecided qualities about planets through specials.

What I'm getting at, is the concept of specials could be a way for modders to make the game like they want it - assigning special attributes to planets that we didn't consider as part of the core game.
Kinda like:
Planet Name
Main attributes
-pop
-size
-etc
Other attributes
-speicals-not relevant to all planets, so show to player when it is relevant ot the planet.

We could also show the user all the info they ever wanted to see by having them click on a button that lists every bit of information, to make them go nuts, all in one window. It may or may not be useful information, just for show.

Nightfish
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#22 Post by Nightfish »

All the important information, like mineral richness, population capacity and stuff like that should be visible at first glance. Not hidden in a second screen.

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utilae
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#23 Post by utilae »

Yes of course.

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#24 Post by drek »

I was thinking tooltips, nice big fat ones like in Rise of Nations. Mouse over stuff like planet sizes, specials (or whatever) and a large block of text immediatly pops up to explain the effects of what you're looking at.

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#25 Post by Impaler »

Another thing whenever I am mousing over some information I should get some pop up of that same statistic from stars/planets ect that would not normaly display it at that level of "drill down". Example lets say I am in glaxtic view and select the Omicron system and its box opens up displaying the planets of the Omicron system, when I mouse over the Population of one of the Planets all systems on my Galaxy veiw light up with numbers representing their populations and pop caps. This can save a HUGE amount of time and Clicks as I would otherwise manualy check nearby systems.

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#26 Post by Nightfish »

MoO2 does a decent job here. It had two pretty decent screens that might help us here:

the "colonies screen" would server very well to show the players all their current colonies, complete with population cap, classifications and first item in build qeue. Those things are stock moo2.
Things we could add are: a field for the build qeue template, a field for the planet group's number (like all science worlds are grouped in "2" and receive orders together.), and at least one more thing that just slipped my mind

the planet's screen showed you all known, uncolonised worlds in alphabetical order. You can sort them by max pop, mineral richness, exclude planets that are not in range or protected by monsters / enemies and stuff like that.

We should definetly have something akin to those 2 screens. (imho)

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Idea

#27 Post by Plasma Dragon »

I got an idea about planet richness level.
1. Ultra poor : 2 points of producion (pp).
2. Poor : 3 pp.
3. Avarage : 5 pp.
4. Rich : 8 pp.
5. Urich : 12 pp.

The main idea of this project is to keep 150% ratio. I think it is very balanced. Technology points should start from 5 (not 3 as in Moo2) to be more equal with producion.

Anyone interested ? 8)
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boolybooly
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#29 Post by boolybooly »

difficult to check balance without playing, depends what minerals do

Stars is great, the idea of mineral products which need to be transported is tasty but its a micromanagement extravaganza too.

In M3(booh!) minerals are a resource type but M2 has only cash food research and pick axes. M2 is clearer as mineral class influences industry per planet. If minerals are a resource type then mineral class influences mining yeild not industry which then depend on population, income and planet character instead. I will not even start to crit M3 or I will never stop.

I prefer it if a rich planet is a real asset like M2 and worth fighting for, so I would suggest that minerals are not a resource but are an industry modifier since the real cost of minerals is transport out of a gravity well ie resource location & transport infrastructure dictates industry location - geography 101. (Which is why I would like to see colonisable asteroid belts improved with space flight & ship tech improvements plus planetary techs.)

The point of cash is that it is an artificial and representative exchange medium so to designate cash as energy makes no sense IMHO (thats an understatement btw) since energy is a commodity and not a currency and conversion entails losses in the order of 10s of %s even in the Super Duper Future.

As for appearance, how about different planet portraits for different mineral classes. Gold silver and ochre for high minerals. Also if there is a planet surface view then high mineral planets have goofy crystals poking out and stuff. If you get into 3d projections or animations then glittering point sprite thingies to make it look nice and rich. I would like to be able to look at planets and recognise their general type.

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skdiw
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#30 Post by skdiw »

Graphics isn't imporant so a simple crystal symbol is fine for me. We can always retouch it latter. We can use different color or number of crystal to denote the richness and/or using names.

As for its effect, I have posted my formula on economic thread. I think every player would put ultra rich planets with mining as first priorty/classifciation. maybe industry as second, but not necessary. The planet/astroid/star could be just a mining post and the excess get delivered to stockpile/treasury. I think industry should be mineral intensive so there is always a need to steal that rich planet from the opponent. Richness just mulitply the mineral output for that colony so it has a direct impact on empire's industry. I don't think richness should run out, we can have specials that runs out or random events that changes richness. I like plasma dragon's idea except if impacts mineral points not pp.

I really like Moo1's system where it had white and other hot stars are more likely to be mineral rich so before the game even started, players would already start scheming. Once the system is explored, the galaxy screen or having tooltip over the star, it could just list number of planet that have this richness etc., or an overall richness (bad idea imo).

@Nightfish
colonies and planetary screens are very good. Just make sure that are plenty of sort options. Moo3 didn't have enough options.

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