Xenophobia

Describe your experience with the latest version of FreeOrion to help us improve it.

Moderator: Oberlus

Forum rules
Always mention the exact version of FreeOrion you are testing.

When reporting an issue regarding the AI, if possible provide the relevant AI log file and a save game file that demonstrates the issue.
Post Reply
Message
Author
Toastmartin
Space Floater
Posts: 37
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2015 10:39 am

Xenophobia

#1 Post by Toastmartin »

In the latest test version I played a game with Eaxaw and noticed that the mali for the xenophobic frenzy changed from population malus to a HUGE production malus respective a small research malus. At that point it was to late to build concentration camps, so the easiest solution was to set all the eaxaw colonies to research, that way the malus was barely noticable. Is that intended? I find the production malus exessive and the resaerch malus to small.

Unrelated matter: Is there a way to calculate the supply range of a given planet (by size, infrasturcture, dry docks, technologie and species)? I regularily wonder why a certian range is so big/small.

wobbly
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 1879
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: Xenophobia

#2 Post by wobbly »

Toastmartin wrote: Unrelated matter: Is there a way to calculate the supply range of a given planet (by size, infrasturcture, dry docks, technologie and species)? I regularily wonder why a certian range is so big/small.
One of the buttons on the planet expands the numbers to show supply. Mouse over that & it will show the calculation. Tiny planets get a bonus & large a penalty. The rest are just race & tech

User avatar
MatGB
Creative Contributor
Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: Xenophobia

#3 Post by MatGB »

Toastmartin wrote:In the latest test version I played a game with Eaxaw and noticed that the mali for the xenophobic frenzy changed from population malus to a HUGE production malus respective a small research malus. At that point it was to late to build concentration camps, so the easiest solution was to set all the eaxaw colonies to research, that way the malus was barely noticable. Is that intended? I find the production malus exessive and the resaerch malus to small.
I didn't intentionally make any changes in that area, there's always been a malus and I, personally, normally keep most of my Eaxaw worlds to research and Camp conquests for production, so I possibly haven't noticed an inadvertant change.

Can you throw up some screenshots and/or post a savegame so I can have a look and see what might be happening?

For what it's worth, the reason I haven't really touched them is I intend to give a much bigger balance pass on the whole xenophobic area at some point, I dislike the current formulaic approach as I can never work out what it's meant to be doing, I'm going to test a simpler penalty based on the number of planets about but it's not happening before the next Release.
Unrelated matter: Is there a way to calculate the supply range of a given planet (by size, infrasturcture, dry docks, technologie and species)? I regularily wonder why a certian range is so big/small.
Infrastructure doesn't currently affect Supply, nor does Drydock, currently it's just Planet Size, Species Bonus, techs and buildings. Wobbly's correct about the mouseover.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

wobbly
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 1879
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2013 6:48 pm

Re: Xenophobia

#4 Post by wobbly »

MatGB wrote:
Toastmartin wrote:In the latest test version I played a game with Eaxaw and noticed that the mali for the xenophobic frenzy changed from population malus to a HUGE production malus respective a small research malus. At that point it was to late to build concentration camps, so the easiest solution was to set all the eaxaw colonies to research, that way the malus was barely noticable. Is that intended? I find the production malus exessive and the resaerch malus to small.
I didn't intentionally make any changes in that area, there's always been a malus and I, personally, normally keep most of my Eaxaw worlds to research and Camp conquests for production, so I possibly haven't noticed an inadvertant change.

Can you throw up some screenshots and/or post a savegame so I can have a look and see what might be happening?

For what it's worth, the reason I haven't really touched them is I intend to give a much bigger balance pass on the whole xenophobic area at some point, I dislike the current formulaic approach as I can never work out what it's meant to be doing, I'm going to test a simpler penalty based on the number of planets about but it's not happening before the next Release.
They changed when you changed production priorities. The Xenophobe penalty is now multiplying tech bonuses. I'll throw up some numbers if I get some time to play.

User avatar
MatGB
Creative Contributor
Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: Xenophobia

#5 Post by MatGB »

Ah, OK, that wasn't intentional, I tried to keep it neutral, obviously didn't check enough.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Toastmartin
Space Floater
Posts: 37
Joined: Thu Nov 19, 2015 10:39 am

Re: Xenophobia

#6 Post by Toastmartin »

Oh, ok. The supply-meter is VERY hidden, since the supply symbol is not there if the menu is not expanded. Infrastructure doesnt do anything at the moment, right?? Whats the design intention behind seperating infrastructure from suppply?
Is it intentional that outposts have a base supply range of 0? They still refuel ships, right?

Regarding the xenophobia: This game I am playing trith and conquered some eaxaw nearby .. great example.

So from the Xenophobic frenzy the Trith get a population modifier (it is still positive sometimtes).
Eaxaw do not get the population modifier. The other effects of frenzy and harassment of the both species seem to be similar, but i cannot see the calculation behind the numbers. The production malus seems to scale multiplicatively with other factors. I'll apped the savegame.

Sidenote: I'm always sad that i cannnot build concentration camps on small colonies that I conquered. How bout slave camps, where the alien population is not killed, but exploited anyway? +50% Production -50% research -50% pop growth on top of the racial traits ..
Attachments

[The extension sav has been deactivated and can no longer be displayed.]


User avatar
MatGB
Creative Contributor
Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: Xenophobia

#7 Post by MatGB »

Toastmartin wrote:Oh, ok. The supply-meter is VERY hidden, since the supply symbol is not there if the menu is not expanded. Infrastructure doesnt do anything at the moment, right?? Whats the design intention behind seperating infrastructure from suppply?
Can't speak to intent, it was done way before I was even active on the forums, but back when supply was "Construction" based it was a pain as it took ages to expand even a single jump (1 per 10), and the current idea is that Infrastructure represents the facilities on a planet and buildings and similar that in other more colony-management focused games you'd have to be building yourself. We want to do more with infrastructure and make it an actually useful overall stat in a variety of ways, but we haven't ever had a clear agreement on how to do it.
Is it intentional that outposts have a base supply range of 0? They still refuel ships, right?
Base supply 0, yes, but they get bonuses from techs and planet size. The new supply propagation system is it appears a bit iffy, if the system has your colour on the system circle then you get to refuel, if not you don't—basically outpost tiny worlds not gas giants if your objective is supply/refuel propagation.
Regarding the xenophobia: This game I am playing trith and conquered some eaxaw nearby .. great example.

So from the Xenophobic frenzy the Trith get a population modifier (it is still positive sometimtes).
Eaxaw do not get the population modifier. The other effects of frenzy and harassment of the both species seem to be similar, but i cannot see the calculation behind the numbers. The production malus seems to scale multiplicatively with other factors. I'll apped the savegame.
Thanks, I'll look at this. For what it's worth, only Trith are meant to get the population malus, it balances out the Self Sustaining Bonus (and should, currently, actually do so but no more than so, it is of course possible I got some of the maths wrong).

The problem with production is one I should've realised—basically I didn't touch the priority of xenophobia, it applies just after the standard species modifier, but given I've moved a bunch of things to now apply before the modifier this changes the numbers in a way I forgot would happen.

Also, of course, before the order was determined by when the file was processed, some species affected it more than other simply because of where they were in species.tx, now all species should affect things the same way and therefore it will seem more as sometimes you just got the -1 regardless.

Having said that, not sure that it's unbalanced, it is supposed to be a negative effect afterall. I'll look into it, and very grateful you noticed and brought it up, even if things stay exactly as they are it should be because we think this is the way it should work not because we changed other things and forgot the knock on.
Sidenote: I'm always sad that i cannnot build concentration camps on small colonies that I conquered. How bout slave camps, where the alien population is not killed, but exploited anyway? +50% Production -50% research -50% pop growth on top of the racial traits ..
I would, genuinely, like to do a complete pass over how xenophobia works, expand it a bit and make the numbers more sensible, having work camps and death camps as conscious choices for the player with differing effects, so if people want to flesh out different approaches that would be cool.

My current thinking is to replace the current formulae for production and research with a size based per planet affect, for each non-Eaxaw/Trith planet nearby large planets lose 4, tiny planets 1, and vice versa, but I've not even gotten around to checking the maths on how it would work, etc. Basically every xenophobic planet increases the effect on non-xeno populations and vice verse, the current is a simple if/then approach.

Re the maths, it's in default/scripting/species/common this is the effect on the xenophobic species:

Code: Select all

        EffectsGroup
            scope = Source
            activation = And [
                PopulationCenter
                Number low = 1 condition = And [
                    PopulationCenter
                    OwnedBy empire = Source.Owner
                    Not OR [ 
                        Species name = Source.Species
                        Species name = "SP_EXOBOT"
                    ]
                    Not Population high = 0
                    Not Contains Building name = "BLD_CONC_CAMP"
                    WithinStarlaneJumps jumps = 5 condition = Source
                ]
            ]
            stackinggroup = "XENOPHOBIC_LABEL_SELF"
            accountinglabel = "XENOPHOBIC_LABEL_SELF"
            priority = [[LATE_PRIORITY]]
            effects = [ 
                SetTargetIndustry value = Value * 0.2 - 1
                SetTargetResearch value = Value * 0.9
                SetTargetHappiness value = Value - (
                    Count condition = And [
                    PopulationCenter
                    WithinStarlaneJumps jumps = 5 condition = Source
                    OwnedBy empire = Source.Owner
                    Not OR [ 
                        Species name = Source.Species
                        Species name = "SP_EXOBOT"
                    ]
                    Not Population high = 0
                ]
                )
            ]
Short version: if there's a non-self species within 5 jumps then research is multiplied by 0.9 and industry is multiplied by 0.2...

Um, yeah, that's not right, having that multiplier just hit the basic planet production would be fine, but having it hit after huge number of effects not so fine. I'll fix that.

The effect on other species is

Code: Select all

'''     EffectsGroup
            scope = And [
                PopulationCenter
                OwnedBy empire = Source.Owner
                Not OR [ 
                    Species name = Source.Species
                    Species name = "SP_EXOBOT"
                ]
                Not Population high = 0
                Not Contains Building name = "BLD_CONC_CAMP"
                WithinStarlaneJumps jumps = 5 condition = Source
            ]
            activation = PopulationCenter
            stackinggroup = "XENOPHOBIC_LABEL_@1@_OTHER"
            accountinglabel = "XENOPHOBIC_LABEL_@1@_OTHER"
            priority = [[LATE_PRIORITY]]
            effects = SetTargetIndustry value = Value - Target.Population * 0.1
short version: a non-xenos species within 5 jumps loses 0.1 PP per population—hadn't noticed it was target population not current population, not sure that should be the case either.

Yeah, looking at that the xenophobic self industry malus is clearly way too high for where I set the priority and needs to be changed, many many thanks for highlighting that.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Xenophobia

#8 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Toastmartin wrote:Oh, ok. The supply-meter is VERY hidden, since the supply symbol is not there if the menu is not expanded.
You can also made the system sidepanel / planet list wider, in which case it will show more icons. But there's only so much space, so something has to be hidden while in minimized mode...

Maybe supply should be moved to the resources panel, from the military/defense panel where it currently is, to balance the number of icons in each, and since it's arguably just as or more relevant for production than planet defense...

User avatar
MatGB
Creative Contributor
Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: Xenophobia

#9 Post by MatGB »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
Toastmartin wrote:Oh, ok. The supply-meter is VERY hidden, since the supply symbol is not there if the menu is not expanded.
You can also made the system sidepanel / planet list wider, in which case it will show more icons. But there's only so much space, so something has to be hidden while in minimized mode...
Worth observing there that the sidepanel size is relatively dynamic if the game starts with the window filling an HD monitor everythign is displayed, when I swithced to it recently I found the sidepanal size excessive.
Maybe supply should be moved to the resources panel, from the military/defense panel where it currently is, to balance the number of icons in each, and since it's arguably just as or more relevant for production than planet defense...
Actually, is there a reason to not put it in the topline with population and happiness? We currently have 2 on the top, 4 on the middle and 5 on the bottom row. And one of the middle row entries currently doesn't do anything (but will, hopefully, soon).

Supply is actually something you look for relatively quickly for completely different reasons to output and defence, givent here's space on the top row, why not?
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

User avatar
The Silent One
Graphics
Posts: 1129
Joined: Tue Jul 01, 2003 8:27 pm

Re: Xenophobia

#10 Post by The Silent One »

MatGB wrote:
Maybe supply should be moved to the resources panel, from the military/defense panel where it currently is, to balance the number of icons in each, and since it's arguably just as or more relevant for production than planet defense...
Actually, is there a reason to not put it in the topline with population and happiness? We currently have 2 on the top, 4 on the middle and 5 on the bottom row. And one of the middle row entries currently doesn't do anything (but will, hopefully, soon).
It's actually 2-4-6 currently. I would suggest to rearrange the icons like this:
"Colony Panel": Population, Happiness, Infrastructure (since it represents the colony's development status)
"Resource Panel": Industry, Research, Influence, Supply
"Combat Panel": Shields, Defense, Troops, Detection, Stealth
Though I can also imagine to put supply on the colony panel; depends if you see it as a resource or a colony property. But I would move infrastructure there as well in any case.
MatGB wrote:[influece] doesn't do anything (but will, hopefully, soon)
As far as I'm concerned, I'll hopefully have time to work on it again in 2-3 weeks.
If I provided any images, code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0.

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Xenophobia

#11 Post by Geoff the Medio »

The Silent One wrote:Though I can also imagine to put supply on the colony panel; depends if you see it as a resource or a colony property.
It's not a resource, but it's most important for how you use / distribute resources...

User avatar
MatGB
Creative Contributor
Posts: 3310
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Re: Xenophobia

#12 Post by MatGB »

I'd personally say it's most useful and referred to (by me at least) for refuelling fleets and/or contesting borders, that's what I most often need to look it up for. Generally whether a newish system is supply connected to other resource centres is determined by them not the new place as I tend to expand within supply when possible, etc.
Mat Bowles

Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

User avatar
Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5715
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: Xenophobia

#13 Post by Oberlus »

I'm playing 0.4.7 RC1.

My last two games have been with the (currently) only xenophobic species, Trith (also the only self-sustaining) and Eaxaw (the only one that starts with great pilots). I find them quite easy.

In both games I had the preconception that Xenophobia would hurt my PPs so I worked to death any invaded planet. But at some point I checked the production stats of planets and I find them mostly negligible. E.g.
- Occupied Kobuntura planet: current industry 9, target 54, xeno. harrasment -4.4. That's less than 10%, and only for that planet.
- Eaxaw planet in system next to previous one has target industry 7.57 and xenophobic frenzy -0.23.
- Eaxaw planet in system next to George system doesn't even list xeno. frenzy.

It seems to me that Xenophobia has way less impact than the indirect production bonus you get from great pilots (they need 60% ships of enemy to do the same dmg) or from self-sustaining (as effectively starting with all three special growth bonuses).

May it be that Xenophobic trait is not much of a disadvantage?

Comparing Humans with Trith and Eaxaw, the xenophobic species seems favoured (one with huge combat advantage and the other with great habitability, specially if low or none specials for the humans to catch up in mid/late game).

User avatar
Voker57
Space Kraken
Posts: 135
Joined: Sat Aug 13, 2016 4:46 pm

Re: Xenophobia

#14 Post by Voker57 »

Yes, Xenophobia malus appears to be neglible recently. I meant to raise an issue about that. You can live next door to planet full of gysache and suffer minor annoyance.
Team S.M.A.C.: destroying dreams of multiplayer 4x since 2017.

Post Reply