New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

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labgnome
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New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#1 Post by labgnome »

So I was recently inspired about a new possible species ability for Free Orion. The idea is to have a species that can "map" starlanes outside of detection range. Basically similar to the Trith's telepathic detection for species, but allowing the species that possess it to see starlanes even outside of their detection range. This ability would not reveal stars and planets, just the starlane map of their area. Species with prescience/prescient vision should also be telepathic.

Now mind you I don't know if this would be possible to code, but it struck me as a really interesting idea.

The fluff could be something along the lines of:
"Possessing the ability to see possible futures some species are able to use this ability to accurately predict starlanes."

Basically something along the lines of the Dune Navigators.

This ability should possibly go to the Fulver as they are supposed to be precognitive.
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LienRag
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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#2 Post by LienRag »

Very interesting indeed !
It's not that powerful a trait (depending of course of how far they see starlanes out of vision range) since what is paramount is knowing where there are monsters (at exploration stage) and enemy ships (later), but not a negligible one either as it can show dead-ends and help plan ahead one's explorations.
And it adds to the diversity of the game and of gameplay, which is one objective of having different species.

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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#3 Post by LienRag »

What would make that trait much more powerful would be adding the ability to foresee not only starlanes but also Star type, at least on the vicinity of the Detection Range ?

Or directly make a new trait (only for lithic metabolism maybe), Gravitic Sensibility, which would allow to detect Black Holes and Neutron Stars from far away ?
(just knowing that they're there, not anything more)

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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#4 Post by labgnome »

LienRag wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 2:07 am What would make that trait much more powerful would be adding the ability to foresee not only starlanes but also Star type, at least on the vicinity of the Detection Range ?

Or directly make a new trait (only for lithic metabolism maybe), Gravitic Sensibility, which would allow to detect Black Holes and Neutron Stars from far away ?
(just knowing that they're there, not anything more)
I think that might be too powerful, especially when combined with a phototrophic species. I was thinking more of just the starlanes.
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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#5 Post by LienRag »

How deep would you make that prescience trait go ?

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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#6 Post by Oberlus »

Two hops away seems like a good number to start testing.

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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#7 Post by Ophiuchus »

I like this one, I just dont know if it feasable. At my current level of understanding the starlanes are just attached to planets and are show if you know about the planets - so no tracking of known starlanes.
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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#8 Post by LienRag »

If it's feasible (obviously the first requirement) then testing it with only the "starlane" visibility and two hops is probably the way to go.
Adding prescience of Star Types, maybe even some specials or the presence of natives (for telepathic species) can be done later.

If prescience of starlanes is too difficult to implement, and since the Scrying Sphere clearly shows that it's possible to be aware of planets out of detection range, it may be possible to test only the prescience of natives two hops away from detection range for some telepathic species ? That would show only the planet, not what's on it.
I reckon it would be much more powerful that the original proposition, though. Someone wrote that Laenfa were underpowered except in young galaxies, so maybe that could be a way to compensate ?
Or having prescience only of other telepathic species (natives or controlled by opponents) ? That would certainly make sense immersion-wise...

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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#9 Post by labgnome »

Ophiuchus wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 12:56 pm I like this one, I just dont know if it feasable. At my current level of understanding the starlanes are just attached to planets and are show if you know about the planets - so no tracking of known starlanes.
So I know that "unknown" unexplored sytems show up on the edge of the map when exploring, not showing any stars or planets. If that "edge" could be extended out to say a number of jumps (maybe 5) that could give the effect I'm looking for.

Edit: actually, what's the minimum amount of information that can be revealed about a planet? Maybe we could get the desired effect by revealing the systems but not any info about them.
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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#10 Post by Ophiuchus »

labgnome wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 4:47 am
Ophiuchus wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 12:56 pm I like this one, I just dont know if it feasable. At my current level of understanding the starlanes are just attached to planets and are show if you know about the planets - so no tracking of known starlanes.
So I know that "unknown" unexplored sytems show up on the edge of the map when exploring, not showing any stars or planets. If that "edge" could be extended out to say a number of jumps (maybe 5) that could give the effect I'm looking for.

Edit: actually, what's the minimum amount of information that can be revealed about a planet? Maybe we could get the desired effect by revealing the systems but not any info about them.
telepathic detection (like the Trith) sets visibility to at least Basic. Scrying sphere sets partial visibility. Communal vision (george) sets Full visibility.

According to the VisibilityValueRefParser thats basically it.

Code: Select all

        enum_expr
            =   tok.Invisible_  [ _val = VIS_NO_VISIBILITY ]
            |   tok.Basic_      [ _val = VIS_BASIC_VISIBILITY ]
            |   tok.Partial_    [ _val = VIS_PARTIAL_VISIBILITY ]
            |   tok.Full_       [ _val = VIS_FULL_VISIBILITY ]
            ;
There is no tracking of starlane visibility in the code:

Code: Select all

universe/System.h:    std::map<int, bool> m_starlanes_wormholes;      ///< the ints represent the IDs of other connected systems; the bools indicate whether the connection is a wormhole (true) or a starlane (false)
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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#11 Post by labgnome »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 11:23 am
labgnome wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 4:47 am
Ophiuchus wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 12:56 pm I like this one, I just dont know if it feasable. At my current level of understanding the starlanes are just attached to planets and are show if you know about the planets - so no tracking of known starlanes.
So I know that "unknown" unexplored sytems show up on the edge of the map when exploring, not showing any stars or planets. If that "edge" could be extended out to say a number of jumps (maybe 5) that could give the effect I'm looking for.

Edit: actually, what's the minimum amount of information that can be revealed about a planet? Maybe we could get the desired effect by revealing the systems but not any info about them.
telepathic detection (like the Trith) sets visibility to at least Basic. Scrying sphere sets partial visibility. Communal vision (george) sets Full visibility.

According to the VisibilityValueRefParser thats basically it.

Code: Select all

        enum_expr
            =   tok.Invisible_  [ _val = VIS_NO_VISIBILITY ]
            |   tok.Basic_      [ _val = VIS_BASIC_VISIBILITY ]
            |   tok.Partial_    [ _val = VIS_PARTIAL_VISIBILITY ]
            |   tok.Full_       [ _val = VIS_FULL_VISIBILITY ]
            ;
There is no tracking of starlane visibility in the code:

Code: Select all

universe/System.h:    std::map<int, bool> m_starlanes_wormholes;      ///< the ints represent the IDs of other connected systems; the bools indicate whether the connection is a wormhole (true) or a starlane (false)
First: could an ability give basic visibility and also reveal starlane connections?
Second: is starlane visibility something that could be added, say for 0.5.0 or 0.5.1?
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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#12 Post by Ophiuchus »

At the moment we can basically reuse the TELEPATHIC_DETECTION macro without checking for habitable worlds, the effect is not exactly what we imagined but looks interesting. Indicates possibilities somewhere around the Fulver and it helps not jumping into dead-ends so should increase exploration rate. 2-jumps and 3-jumps basic visibility look both good to me.

I will put up a PR.

@labgnome:
First: Not sure what you mean by ability.

Second: One could certainly change basic visibility or add another kind of visibility level (e.g. starlane visibility) with backend changes. We should definitly talk about that in the stealth revamp context.
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Re: New Species Trait: prescient vision/prescience

#13 Post by labgnome »

Ophiuchus wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 11:50 am At the moment we can basically reuse the TELEPATHIC_DETECTION macro without checking for habitable worlds, the effect is not exactly what we imagined but looks interesting. Indicates possibilities somewhere around the Fulver and it helps not jumping into dead-ends so should increase exploration rate. 2-jumps and 3-jumps basic visibility look both good to me.

I will put up a PR.

@labgnome:
First: Not sure what you mean by ability.

Second: One could certainly change basic visibility or add another kind of visibility level (e.g. starlane visibility) with backend changes. We should definitly talk about that in the stealth revamp context.
Zeroth: This makes me think of other uses for the telepathic detection macro, like maybe a "SETI Protocols" policy that would reveal planets with the advanced tech special.
Edit: the Fulver are playable so I'd go with 3-jumps.

First: By ability I meant species trait. Sorry.

Second: I was aware that it would take back-end changes, which I was hesitant about, but I think it could be worth it. That sounds exciting, and makes me wonder what other kinds of visibility levels we could create.
All of my contributions should be considered released under creative commons attribution share-alike license, CC-BY-SA 3.0 for use in, by and with the Free Orion project.

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