One species per planet.

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utilae
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#31 Post by utilae »

I say we don't allow more than one race on a planet.

Each planet has ONE race and ONE race ONLY.

A system may have a planet of RaceA, planet of RaceB, etc, as long as RaceA and RaceB not on the same planet.

Immigration works as follows: Race Citizens can only move to a planet that allows them (eg RaceA move to RaceA Planet and not to RaceB Planet).

If planet captured, loosing race on planet is either:
a) Killed
b) Ejected
c) Other Alternative except staying on planet

THAT WAY IT WOULD BE SIMPLE, K.I.S.S., KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID

I don't see the need for any complexity beyond that. After all, we have to be ruthless and cut out the fat, otherwise FreeOrion will end up looking like a big fat spreadsheet.

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#32 Post by Daveybaby »

The problem is, if you only allow one species per planet, ever, hardcoded into the game, then it makes it very tedious indeed to try to change species. You will either have to:

(1) Bombard the planet empty first. Not particularly useful if, for some weird reason, you dont actually want to kill off large chunks of your own empire's population.
(2) Move everyone off the planet (may take a large number of turns), then move someone else back in (micromanagement intensive)
(3) Never let the player change which species is on a planet, ever. Personally I dont think this is a particularly viable option for a game which is, to a significant degree, about empire management.

All i am suggesting is to relax the rule slightly, for transitional periods only.

Things like this:
marhawkman wrote:
I more favor an approach like this:

Code: Select all

race      |number on planet 
Kurkonians| 12 
Andorians | 8 
Aubrei    | 4 
Gterrat   | 3 
would never happen unless the player started messing around changing the target species for the planet every turn. If theyre dicking around to that extent, then yes, things might get messy. But as soon as they get bored and stop faffing, the planet will still start to transition to a steady state with one species only.
Geoff the Medio wrote:...the problem with [having multiple races per planet] wasn't just micro, it was also the difficulty easily explaining any effects that population has on production or whatever in terms like (56% race A) * (+5) + (33% race B) * (-0.5) = (+2.635) bonus, or various other fractions of bonuses in complicated arrangements that could then occur. With one race, it's just (+5), which is easy and simple to explain and understand.
Replying to this again, but i want to get my point across - I agree that its important that the player is presented with straightforward and easy to understand information regarding what their planets are producing, but i think that during a transitional phase its natural to expect values to ramp from the initial value to the final value.

If your (industrial) planet is full of scienceoids and you (quite reasonably) want it to be full of industroids, then before you start you might be getting 100 industry, and once the changeover is complete you might be getting 200 industry.

Say it takes 10 turns for the changeover to complete, then each turn the change will ramp up from 100 to 200. I dont see this as being particularly taxing for the player to comprehend, any more than if you were instead to change the planet's focus from industrial to scientific. Presumably the outputs wouldnt change instantly, the infrastructure would have to be built up, and so a similar transitional period would occur.

Why is this a problem when its due to a species change, and not when its due to a focus change? Its the same thing!

Just to reiterate one more time - i think there should only be one race per planet, but i think that the player should be able to simply decide which race they want on that planet, and have the game's migration code take over from there. As a result, the game code needs to be able to deal with more than one race while it is changing from one race to the other.
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#33 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Daveybaby wrote:(2) Move everyone off the planet (may take a large number of turns), then move someone else back in
[...]
Say it takes 10 turns for the changeover to complete...
If it takes 10 turns to replace all the population of type A with population of type B, then it would take about 20 turns to remove all the population of type A and replace with equal amounts of type B. I'm not sure what the cutoff for "a large number of turns is" but if it's not 10, then it's probably not 20.

Also, presumably the time taken to de- and re-populate is dependent on the total population. As a result, it would be easier to change the race on a low-population planet. It would take much longer, perhaps a large number of turns, for a very high population planet, but not very long for small low population planets. Further, repopulating a large population planet would require an intervening period with significantly lower population numbers, representing a significant penalty to production during the change. So in practice, you'd be less likely to want to repopulation a high population planet, so in pratice, the time spent repopulating planets would be low... if it takes too long, it's probably not worth doing. Alternatively, you could probably speed things up by various genocidic techniques, if the current race is sooo objectionable you just have to get rid of it.
(micromanagement intensive)
Depopulating and repopulating is no more micromanagement intensive than changing race with a constant total population number. In either case, the player would mark planets with desired races, and the migration system would take over.
i think there should only be one race per planet [...] the game code needs to be able to deal with more than one race while it is changing from one race to the other.
These are mutually exclusive. Stick a "most of the time" or somesuch on there, perhaps... but as written, it's got to be either one or the other.

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#34 Post by Daveybaby »

Geoff the Medio wrote:If it takes 10 turns to replace all the population of type A with population of type B, then it would take about 20 turns to remove all the population of type A and replace with equal amounts of type B. I'm not sure what the cutoff for "a large number of turns is" but if it's not 10, then it's probably not 20.
10 was just a number plucked out of the air to illustrate an example. By your argument no amount of turns would count as "large", since if its not 20, then its probably not 40, and thus its probably not 80, 160, or 320 either :wink: However, the main point, of course, is to balance the costs and times of migration so that it works in a playable way using whatever system is chosen.

Regardless, if something takes twice as long, IMO thats a significant difference. Not to mention that if you depopulate the planet first you ramp all output down to zero then up again gradually, instead of just transitioning from one level to another. I still fail to see why this causes problems...
Also, presumably the time taken to de- and re-populate is dependent on the total population. As a result, it would be easier to change the race on a low-population planet. It would take much longer, perhaps a large number of turns, for a very high population planet, but not very long for small low population planets. Further, repopulating a large population planet would require an intervening period with significantly lower population numbers, representing a significant penalty to production during the change.
Not as significant as completely depopulating it first.
So in practice, you'd be less likely to want to repopulation a high population planet, so in pratice, the time spent repopulating planets would be low... if it takes too long, it's probably not worth doing.
Agreed. But people may still want to do it on occasion. People are weird.
Alternatively, you could probably speed things up by various genocidic techniques, if the current race is sooo objectionable you just have to get rid of it.
Yup, or by setting migration policies, e.g. various levels of government subsidies, or forced migration.
Depopulating and repopulating is no more micromanagement intensive than changing race with a constant total population number. In either case, the player would mark planets with desired races, and the migration system would take over.
Fair enough.
These are mutually exclusive. Stick a "most of the time" or somesuch on there, perhaps... but as written, it's got to be either one or the other.
Yeah, okay i missed a bit out. What it should say: The player can only choose one race per planet. The normal state for a planet is one race only. But, while a planet transitions from one race to another, there can be more than one race, temporarily.

Note that another reason to keep things flexible is: if you ever wanted to implement something like a parasitic/borg/vampire/harvester/alien (as in the movie 'alien') race in the game, it would fit into this mechanism pretty easily. The only difference would be that you woudnt have to migrate people in or out for the population to change.
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#35 Post by maelstrom512 »

What if we allowed multiple species per planet but then used various economic and environmental factors to determine how much of each race?

So... For example, Psilons would thrive and immigrate to places focusing on technology and Humans would immigrate to terran worlds and emigrate from harsher environments. Also, conflicting races would avoid each other. The players would then have nothing to do with which races go where, it would all be done for them for the best interest of their empire.

That is if they are a nice, freedom loving empire... If they aren't... Well then we should allow them to specifically ban races from each planet/system (pick one, not both!) and pick races do declare xenocidal intent on which would just be killed...

Thoughts?

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#36 Post by utilae »

Sorry about all the Bold and Caps, but that post wanted to be seen.
Daveybaby wrote: The problem is, if you only allow one species per planet, ever, hardcoded into the game, then it makes it very tedious indeed to try to change species. You will either have to:

Alright, ONE race on a planet at a time. Cause I still want races to swap planets, but I don't feel the need for players to choose which races go on which planets.
Daveybaby wrote: (1) Bombard the planet empty first. Not particularly useful if, for some weird reason, you dont actually want to kill off large chunks of your own empire's population.

Ok, so why would you want to replace your race with some alien race?
Daveybaby wrote: (2) Move everyone off the planet (may take a large number of turns), then move someone else back in (micromanagement intensive)
It will take one turn (you can think of ground combat is the extra turns it takes to find and get the aliens off the planet). And since the play would not be making any decisions to move races around, no micromanagement.
Daveybaby wrote: (3) Never let the player change which species is on a planet, ever. Personally I dont think this is a particularly viable option for a game which is, to a significant degree, about empire management. All i am suggesting is to relax the rule slightly, for transitional periods only.
Obviously I was thinking of swaps in specific cases, eg invasion, diplomatic, eg giving planets away. But these things can be done through swaps and avoid having races on the planet at the same time. Also I see no need for migration manipulation, for 'empire management'. That's just micromanagement, and would be boring. Back to creating ships me thinks.
Last edited by utilae on Fri Jun 30, 2006 9:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

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#37 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Daveybaby wrote:...if its not 20, then its probably not 40, and thus its probably not 80, 160, or 320 either
Well no... on two levels: If it's not 10, it's *probably* not 20, not definitely not 20. So it's probably not 20, maybe not 30, probably 40, almost definitely 50. A high conditional probability between events does not mean that one implies the other necessarily.
Not to mention that if you depopulate the planet first you ramp all output down to zero then up again gradually, instead of just transitioning from one level to another. I still fail to see why this causes problems...
I fail to see your point... I mentioned the same effect on production / output... and didn't say it was a problem... and your implying it doesn't have any problems seems to support it, rather than your own suggestion of maintaining constant population with varying proportions of each race...
Further, repopulating a large population planet would require an intervening period with significantly lower population numbers, representing a significant penalty to production during the change.
Not as significant as completely depopulating it first.
That's what I said... again?
So in practice, you'd be less likely to want to repopulation a high population planet, so in pratice, the time spent repopulating planets would be low... if it takes too long, it's probably not worth doing.
Agreed. But people may still want to do it on occasion. People are weird.
Well good for them then... they can wait. Do we worry that building a lot of ships and then self-destructing them would be a waste of resources and possibly micromanagement intensive for the (lack of) benefit?
Note that another reason to keep things flexible is: if you ever wanted to implement something like a parasitic/borg/vampire/harvester/alien (as in the movie 'alien') race in the game, it would fit into this mechanism pretty easily.
Ok, but how do you ensure there are only ever two races during a transition? What if xenomorphs (Alien aliens) attack a planet you're transitioning from race A to race B?

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#38 Post by Daveybaby »

Geoff the Medio wrote:A high conditional probability between events does not mean that one implies the other necessarily.
I was being silly, hence the smiley? The numbers are irrelevant, especially round numbers that are picked out of the air to illustrate an example.
I fail to see your point... I mentioned the same effect on production / output... and didn't say it was a problem... and your implying it doesn't have any problems seems to support it, rather than your own suggestion of maintaining constant population with varying proportions of each race...
I think it is a problem. Having to completely depopulate a planet and shut down all production could be a significant problem. For example, what about local maintenance on buildings/projects etc?

What i cant see is why having 2 (or more) races on a planet during a transitional phase is a problem. The only argument i've seen against it is that it makes the numbers messy, but my counter argument is that the numbers get messy in any transitional period, regardless of whether it's due to change of focus, implementing a new technology, or changing species on the planet.
That's what I said... again?
Then i'm not sure what your stance on this is... You seem to be arguing against a multi-species transitional period, but i'm still not sure what your problem with it is.
Do we worry that building a lot of ships and then self-destructing them would be a waste of resources and possibly micromanagement intensive for the (lack of) benefit?
I was agreeing with you. There was a clue to this in the use of the word 'agreed'. :?
Ok, but how do you ensure there are only ever two races during a transition? What if xenomorphs (Alien aliens) attack a planet you're transitioning from race A to race B?
Who mentioned two as a hard limit? In your example there would be three, but only during the transition.
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#39 Post by Rockstone »

I think that they should program it so once you take the planet the population stays. Prehaps one could just do what they do in moo2 to calculate, which would be to count the benifits of a population and then count the benifits of all the species together (ie: 100 humans 3 industryx100+ 1000 Sakkra 5 industryx1000= 300+5000= 5300) I think it would work perfectly.
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#40 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Daveybaby wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:A high conditional probability between events does not mean that one implies the other necessarily.
I was being silly, hence the smiley? The numbers are irrelevant, especially round numbers that are picked out of the air to illustrate an example.
The numbers were illustrating a point: Given a particular example of a "short" time, one should not automatically conclude that twice that time is a "long" time; both may be sufficiently not-long to qualify as fairly-short.

Also, presumably if one had to depopulate a planet in order to repopulate it, we'd make the speed of de- and re-population by migration to already-developed worls faster than we would if we allowed constant-population simultaneously bi-direction migration to/from a planet.
Having to completely depopulate a planet and shut down all production could be a significant problem. For example, what about local maintenance on buildings/projects etc?
I don't see the problem. Maintenance, if any, would be paid from the global pool... You wouldn't ever lose ownership of the depopulated planet... it would just have a functional / productive population of zero at some point. This could be treated the same way as a new colony made without any significant initial population of colonists, which can only grow by migration.

(Aside: what exactly is the point of maintenance anyway? I can't recall every thinking about a game, "Gee, paying maintenance sure is fun!" It also promotes overexpansion rather than building up currently-held game-property (why build expensive buildings when you could get free or resource-producing new planets?), which is often the exact opposite of what should be promoted in empire-building games, as the only viable strategy is too often to expliot the power of exponential growth / expansion).
What i cant see is why having 2 (or more) races on a planet during a transitional phase is a problem. The only argument i've seen against it is that it makes the numbers messy, but my counter argument is that the numbers get messy in any transitional period, regardless of whether it's due to change of focus, implementing a new technology, or changing species on the planet.
I guess part of the problem is that changing the focus or the effects of technology just change the meter values that determine resource production after multiplication by population numbers. It's "simple" to just have a single meter value, even if multiple time-dependent things affect the meter value. However, if races are different, then each would have to have a separate set of meters for its segment of the population... It's a lot more complicated to display / understand 2 or 3 sets of meters, each with different sets of time-dependent things affecting its value.
Then i'm not sure what your stance on this is... You seem to be arguing against a multi-species transitional period, but i'm still not sure what your problem with it is.
My stance is that I'm not really happy with the one-species rule, but back in the mists of time, Aquitaine decided, either on his own or after a private or public consultation of some kind, that multiple-species planets are bad, due to the complicated resource production numbers that result. There's certainly a possibility that this could be revised, but it's not going to happen unless the justification / proposed replacement system for doing so is good. Additionally, I want the chosen system to be good, so will attempt to point out flaws in any proposed systems worth the attention / that strike my fancy to attempt to poke holes in, in the hope of improving them, clarifying why or how they aren't flawed, or rejecting excessively flawed systems.

Your justification/system is essentially "it would only complicated sometimes, and even then it's not that complicated". How adequate in practice the "only sometimes" part is, I'm not sure, but it has potential. How true the latter is, I'm doubtful (as judged by the same person(s) who decided there was a problem to start with).
Do we worry that building a lot of ships and then self-destructing them would be a waste of resources and possibly micromanagement intensive for the (lack of) benefit?
I was agreeing with you. There was a clue to this in the use of the word 'agreed'. :?
You also added a "but", to which I replied with an implied "doesn't matter".
Ok, but how do you ensure there are only ever two races during a transition? What if xenomorphs (Alien aliens) attack a planet you're transitioning from race A to race B?
Who mentioned two as a hard limit? In your example there would be three, but only during the transition.
I inferred incorrectly / didn't read sufficiently thoroughly.

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#41 Post by Whitemagebishieboy »

I always prefered "you have your race and youll like it". One race per empire. As allowing multible races adds a hidden penalty to racial advanteges(if the game has them....) In that all your opponents can steal them. So the unification, ship bonuses, spying bonuses race, goes up against the production, tolerant, research race. And the unification race can gain all the production race IN ADDITION to its own, but not vica versa(yes i know its a silly example but it is an example.). That to me doesnt sound very balanced, or fun for the guy recieveing it, and all it takes is conquering one planet and useing the slave race as your laborers from now on.....

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#42 Post by marhawkman »

Rockstone wrote:I think that they should program it so once you take the planet the population stays. Prehaps one could just do what they do in moo2 to calculate, which would be to count the benifits of a population and then count the benifits of all the species together (ie: 100 humans 3 industryx100+ 1000 Sakkra 5 industryx1000= 300+5000= 5300) I think it would work perfectly.
MoO2's system worked well. But it did have several issues. The biggest flaw is that the max population was determined by which of the races had the highest max. Thus if you captured a few planets of a subterranean race you could boost the max pop of your planets by adding one of that race to each planet. not really a good thing. The other issue is that while it works nicely, it's a nightmare to code. You could literally have eight races on a planet. Each would be calculated seperately from the others.
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#43 Post by marhawkman »

Whitemagebishieboy wrote:I always prefered "you have your race and youll like it". One race per empire. As allowing multible races adds a hidden penalty to racial advanteges(if the game has them....) In that all your opponents can steal them. So the unification, ship bonuses, spying bonuses race, goes up against the production, tolerant, research race. And the unification race can gain all the production race IN ADDITION to its own, but not vica versa(yes i know its a silly example but it is an example.). That to me doesnt sound very balanced, or fun for the guy recieveing it, and all it takes is conquering one planet and useing the slave race as your laborers from now on.....
Another good example of how multiple races is easy to abuse.
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#44 Post by Ran Taro »

A partial solution to this that might work with Daveybaby's idea's is to give a large penalty to the efficiency of races after the first on a planet. This penalty would far exceed any racial bonuses. Hence the player is always going to want only one race at a time on each planet.

The fluff justification of this is that infrastructure on a planet is built primarily with a certain race in mind, and therefore not very useful to other races. Humans wouldn't be very good employees in factories designed for multi-tentacled space squid, or one eye'd Spathi, for example.

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#45 Post by Daveybaby »

I guess part of the problem is that changing the focus or the effects of technology just change the meter values that determine resource production after multiplication by population numbers. It's "simple" to just have a single meter value, even if multiple time-dependent things affect the meter value. However, if races are different, then each would have to have a separate set of meters for its segment of the population... It's a lot more complicated to display / understand 2 or 3 sets of meters, each with different sets of time-dependent things affecting its value.
...
Aquitaine decided, [...] that multiple-species planets are bad, due to the complicated resource production numbers that result.
I agree totally - having multiple species per planet as a normal condition would result in overcomplex UI and too many numbers/meters. However, I dont think that you really need to give the player a detailed breakdown in this way if youre only having multiple races while in a transitional state.

Ran Taro wrote:A partial solution to this that might work with Daveybaby's idea's is to give a large penalty to the efficiency of races after the first on a planet. This penalty would far exceed any racial bonuses. Hence the player is always going to want only one race at a time on each planet.

The fluff justification of this is that infrastructure on a planet is built primarily with a certain race in mind, and therefore not very useful to other races. Humans wouldn't be very good employees in factories designed for multi-tentacled space squid, or one eye'd Spathi, for example.
Actually, this is exactly the kind of complexity that i think needs to be avoided, and is why i actually agree with the '1 species per planet' rule in the general case. All i'm proposing is a little bit more flexibility when switching a planet from one species to another, and to allow things like a harvester style race.
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