Design: Gravity

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mr_ed
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#16 Post by mr_ed »

Nightfish wrote:Your people are adapted to "normal" gravity. In low g, they will have all sorts of difficulties, like atrophying muslces and stuff like that.
Not if they work out. ;)

It's a very good point that for machinery and such, there won't be a difference. It will also be the same for high-gravity as well, though.

When it comes to the citizens' comfort, it's much better to have normal g.

Maybe we could cause health problems for the others, then? :?

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utilae
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#17 Post by utilae »

What if your normal g race has lived in high g for 500 turns (500 years). Would they loose the penalty of being a normal g race in high g?

Nightfish
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#18 Post by Nightfish »

Re Mr_Ed: Yes, they could counter the effects by working out, but they'd have to work out a lot (costs a lot of time) and THAT is what causes the main part penalty here. (Imho)

Re Utilae: 500 years or 500 Million years would not make a difference unless they do something radical. Unless you kill of those people poorly adapted to the planet and make those best adapted mate you'll never see any evolution. Unless there is some inpact on either survival or number of offspring, there is no evolution. Even if there was evolution, 500 years would be way too short for that.

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utilae
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#19 Post by utilae »

Ok, that's true I supose, heh. :lol:

drek
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#20 Post by drek »

ed:

I'm pretty sure that machinary (both mechanical and biology) would require much more energy to lift pull and do various other useful things under higher G enviroments--you can build stuff with a lot less effort in a lower G enviroment.

Realism aside the gameplay rationalization for giving smaller worlds an industry bonus is to increase the texture of the colonization decisions the player has to make. If I see a small world that it's in my EP and a large world that's in my EP, I have a stragetic decision: which world do I colonize first?

The smaller world gives better short term gains, the larger world gives better long term gains. The player has to figure out which is more valuable, considering position and strategy.

NF:
Not that it matters,
In the middle ages, Europeans were generally shorter than they are today. Evolution can make minor adapations in surprisingly short periods of time--even taking into account high tech medicine, the death rate among people less adapted for the enviroment would be somewhat higher.

But I agree that we shouldn't make it an aspect of the game. Might be interesting aspect to incorporate for a humans only style mod.

Nightfish
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#21 Post by Nightfish »

That european thing isn't evolution. They were short due to their circumstances of living. Bad food, hard work, few doctors, stuff like that.

Impaler
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#22 Post by Impaler »

In the construction of buildings lifting the steel I beams dose is not going to be a big deal even up too the point of 10G, far beyond the point that ininhabitable for your race. We arn't even desided on the existense of buildings (but I favor them) but their is very little reason to penalize or enhance the cost of building structures based on gravity.

A bonus to the construction of Space ships would be more logical though as we can see that getting something from ground to space is very energy intensive. But logicaly this bonus is derectly linked to gravity not your races gravity preference. Strong gravity +15% cost, low gravity -10% cost so it would penalize the high gravity loving races (on the other hand the high gravity planet is bigger so it holds more population).

Basicaly some effects from gravity sounds like a good idea but we need to think about it very thourogly.

krum
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#23 Post by krum »

Well, my original idea was about a ships and orbitals construction bonus. Seem enought to me as a bonus. The point is it would make sence to colonise smaller planets and/or asteroid fields. Also give some advantage to low gravity races, since their habitable bodies have fewer pop. But realism doesn't stop us if we want to add another general production bonus for better balance, if we wanto to. Cause low gravity planets seem to be more common than high ones. Anyway, we are far away from game balance :)

Btw, remember that race concept for the Unbound? The zero gravity race with the spaceships that ony likes asteroid belts and live on them and motherships.

I thought about the flying around your ships for no cost: If we have a reserves and upkeep system, that's COWs in the cost for getting a ship out of the reserves and upkeep.

Tyreth
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#24 Post by Tyreth »

Nightfish wrote:Re Mr_Ed: Yes, they could counter the effects by working out, but they'd have to work out a lot (costs a lot of time) and THAT is what causes the main part penalty here. (Imho)

Re Utilae: 500 years or 500 Million years would not make a difference unless they do something radical. Unless you kill of those people poorly adapted to the planet and make those best adapted mate you'll never see any evolution. Unless there is some inpact on either survival or number of offspring, there is no evolution. Even if there was evolution, 500 years would be way too short for that.
Evolution cannot occur in 500 years, but adaptation certainly can. This is the natural selection of genetic features already present in a race. Ie, if the race has the genetic code to handle a different gravity world, then those who inherit that code (or have it dominant) will be selected. Adaptation has been observed, but evolution hasn't been. It is possible these changes could occur in 500 years (in some species amazing changes occur within 200 years), but only if the code was already existing. This seems unlikely though - I think it's safe to assume that a creature having lived and evolved on a particular gravity planet will only have the genetic makeup for that gravity type.

This doesn't rule out races interfering with their own genetic code, of course :) So research could theoretically eliminate gravity problems.

Nightfish
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#25 Post by Nightfish »

Sure a race can take action to elimate the penalty. If you alter the planets gravity, or your peoples genome, I really could care less. My point was that unless they do something nothing changes about the penalty. Meaning, if they don't kill of the weak members, or at least block them off from reproduction the race will maintain status quo.

But let's not start talking about evolution after managing to avoid it for 4 month, shall we? :wink:

Tyreth
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#26 Post by Tyreth »

For gravity I want either a simple system (I'm happy with the MOO2 one) or no gravity at all. I don't feel that we need to get complex on this.

drek
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#27 Post by drek »

Personally i think we ought to shelve any decisions regarding gravity until the economic system is in cement--then worry about both gravity and mineral richness when we worry about planet specials.

Even if they are attributes seprate from specials, that seems like the right phase of design--we'd have a better idea on what sort of effect we'd like for these features to have on the game.

And yeah, any system set up for gravity ought to be stooper-simple.

Plasma Dragon
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gravity.

#28 Post by Plasma Dragon »

Aquitaine wrote:Do we need gravity at all?
Yes. I think we do need gravity. Gravity affects :
1. population growth.
2. mineral production on planet.
3. research on planet.
4. food production on planet.

So gravity is really important thing here. Moo2 had 3 levels of gravity :
1. Low G : -25 % penalty
2. Normal G : 0 % penalty
3. Heavy G : -50 % penalty

Moo3 had even more levels of gravity.

I think Moo2 gravity design was good. We could add to it 2 positions :
1. Ultra low G : -50 %
2. Medium Heavy G : -25 % penalty.

About gravity generator : GG in Moo2 was quite far in tech, so low g race pick was bit risky. But this was whole fun. Risk was fun. However most poeple didnt take low g pick, because it is not worthy to be used. :wink:
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Aquitaine
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#29 Post by Aquitaine »

You're making the realism argument.

Gravity affects nothing unless we make it affect something. Just because you can make the point that, if I packed up my stuff and moved to a low-g world, my academic studies might suffer for whatever reason, doesn't mean that it belongs in our game. I'm not convinced that it doesn't, but the argument that 'it can affect stuff' doesn't have a lot of value to me. We have no shortage of things that affect other things.

I'm with Drek on this one. I say we way until we have the econ model hammered out and then decide if we want more variables, and then decide if gravity is what we want.
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Tyreth
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#30 Post by Tyreth »

If we add gravity as a special, it is something that can be easily implemented at a later stage.

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