Help With 4890

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Darkspire
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Help With 4890

#1 Post by Darkspire »

I know there has a been a major code change and im a little confused.
Could someone explain the new changes for me? I cant quite get my head round how my empire survives without food? Does this mean that 'trade' now works? So that we now presume that all foodstuffs are taken care of with a merchant fleet like in MOO2? (I know you still had to allocate the people to farm on the planets to grow the stuff, but this is the only thing I can think of as regards where the food has gone)
What is the new rectangular box with the grey rectangle in it above the focus sections? Is is it the planets population? Has the tech tree had a major shake up as well?
Is there anything else that is a major change that I havent seen / asked about?
I was able to 'pick up and play' all the previous revisions (and any other 4x to think of, except MOO3) but having looked at this one upon loading, although not as bad, I feel like im looking at MOO3. Hence the questions, Im lost.

Sorry to be a bit on the non bright side (I am blonde and large)

Darkspire

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eleazar
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Re: Help With 4890

#2 Post by eleazar »

Darkspire wrote:I cant quite get my head round how my empire survives without food?
The same way it survives without plumbing -- we simply do not simulate it much.

Planets with certain specials, and all homeworlds have access to the "growth" focus. It allows connected planets (with the right kind of species) to have higher populations.

This replaces "food", but is general enough to make sense for all manner of species.
Darkspire wrote:Does this mean that 'trade' now works?
Not yet.
Darkspire wrote:What is the new rectangular box with the grey rectangle in it above the focus sections?
Sounds like a glitch. Please provide a screenshot.
Darkspire wrote:Has the tech tree had a major shake up as well?
Yeah, but that shakeup isn't over.

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Darkspire
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Re: Help With 4890

#3 Post by Darkspire »

The same way it survives without plumbing -- we simply do not simulate it much.

Planets with certain specials, and all homeworlds have access to the "growth" focus. It allows connected planets (with the right kind of species) to have higher populations.

This replaces "food", but is general enough to make sense for all manner of species.
Very vague, with no disrespect that explains what but not why. How does this work? Ive posted an image with the 'box' (red arrow) and i can only presume this box works with the intention of showing the 'growth' focus? I found it in the dropbox for my homeworld, a green arrow. As all the other types of focus have a seperate image (with mouseover) to show how they were increasing / decreasing? So how does this work as an equivalent or substitute for food? With food you could have some worlds set to mass produce foodstuffs that would then supply other worlds that were focusing on research, mining etc that would still allow those worlds to grow thus allowing them to reach there full potential for churning out what ever they were focused on. From reading your reply I can see that only certain worlds will be able to reach a decent level to fully produce, or is this now linked with terraforming? so only when planets reach a certain stage can they focus on growth? Surely you cant spread 'growth' between your planets like food can you? That cant be right, can it? that doesn't make sense, sorry but it doesn't. How can I support the worlds that are focused on research or mining? Am I going to have to shift colonists from a 'growth' focus planet to a non 'growth' planet to help the population to grow? If that isnt the case then how does the other non 'growth' planets population grow without any support? Or is it just that they now grow without any supply? That doesnt make sense either, well not in a 4x anyway, I really dont understand this :( .

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eleazar
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Re: Help With 4890

#4 Post by eleazar »

Darkspire wrote:
The same way it survives without plumbing -- we simply do not simulate it much.

Planets with certain specials, and all homeworlds have access to the "growth" focus. It allows connected planets (with the right kind of species) to have higher populations.

This replaces "food", but is general enough to make sense for all manner of species.
Very vague, with no disrespect that explains what but not why.
I should have said: "we simply do not simulate it. <- period" These specials are a bit more like Civ Resources that allow you to build bigger cities if you control them.

If you want to know "why?" there are obviously labeled threads in the forum. The reasons aren't simple, or amenable to quick explaination.
Darkspire wrote:and i can only presume this box works with the intention of showing the 'growth' focus?
That bar shows population -- just exactly as it has for years. If you hover over the icon above it, it says "{species name} Population."

Darkspire wrote:I found it in the dropbox for my homeworld, a green arrow. As all the other types of focus have a seperate image (with mouseover) to show how they were increasing / decreasing?
It's not the same as industry or research. (and neither are a bunch of other foci you can unlock with techs) You simply set it to "growth" and the maximum possible population of connected planets (of the right sort of species) increases. Your preconceptions are blinding you to the way this works. We don't need to simulate everything that MoO did. The imaginary citizens don't starve or need food unless we program them to.

EDIT:
These are points that will definitely need to be explained with a major release.

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Darkspire
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Re: Help With 4890

#5 Post by Darkspire »

It's not the same as industry or research. (and neither are a bunch of other foci you can unlock with techs) You simply set it to "growth" and the maximum possible population of connected planets (of the right sort of species) increases. Your preconceptions are blinding you to the way this works. We don't need to simulate everything that MoO did. The imaginary citizens don't starve or need food unless we program them to.
If a planet has its focus set to 'growth' its population will grow and all connected planets (of the right sort of species) will then increase in population. So was I right in thinking that the growth can be distributed from one planet to any planets connected in that chain, so in essence your are replacing the word food for growth, which now makes sense, as long as that is the case that would mean that other planets in that chain would be able to focus on research etc the same as they did before when food was the supply, now it is growth that is the supply.
I have no preconceptions, I was just confused as to how this worked, I was using MOO as an example (as most people do since it was released). I also did try to read through the posts on here to try to find out more but the last person to try to question this got a frosty reception so I was a little unsure about asking that was all, but thank you, i think I have pieced together the answer (I hope)

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Bigjoe5
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Re: Help With 4890

#6 Post by Bigjoe5 »

Darkspire wrote:If a planet has its focus set to 'growth' its population will grow and all connected planets (of the right sort of species) will then increase in population. So was I right in thinking that the growth can be distributed from one planet to any planets connected in that chain, so in essence your are replacing the word food for growth, which now makes sense, as long as that is the case that would mean that other planets in that chain would be able to focus on research etc the same as they did before when food was the supply, now it is growth that is the supply.
Not exactly - "distributed" implies that there is a limited amount, and distributing it throughout more planets means each gets less. There is no resource called "Growth". There is just target population. Setting a planet to the "Growth" focus increases the target population of all planets within resource supply range by a flat amount. But other than that, you're more or less right - the Growth bonus applies to all planets in a resource sharing group, so you can still have planets that are getting the bonus to target population even while they are focused on research or industry or whatever.

It's actually a pretty simple system - the only real learning curve is that the effect of setting the focus isn't localized to the planet on which the focus is set, so you have to look somewhere else to figure out what it does, which means you already need to more or less know what it does... perhaps eleazar is right about it needing a different name than "Growth".
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