Wheel of EP Thoughts

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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muxec
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#16 Post by muxec »

Radiated is hot and messy too... It's close to toxic and inferno

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#17 Post by miu »

Muxec: Stop trolling. Or start putting more relevant, considered and reasoned content to your posts.
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#18 Post by muxec »

miu wrote:Muxec: Stop trolling. Or start putting more relevant, considered and reasoned content to your posts.
You could PM this instead of posting here. And I think that my post is relevant.

OK another variant:
Exclude radiated and put radiation as independet meter (just like miniral richness). Radiation levels: low, normal, high, extreme. Radiation distance from optimal also can do the trick.

Low radiation and extreme radiation racial picks must have than a negative value.

Let's recall MoO2ish system

Code: Select all

Toxic
                 /Tundra--Ocean(and swamp)
                /              \
Radiated--Barren--Desert--Arid-Terran--Gaia

PowerCrazy
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#19 Post by PowerCrazy »

Sigh. The original EP Wheel was roughly based on the Moo1 planets. Where Radiated < Inferno < Tundra< Barren < Arid < Ocean < Terran.
(A few were omitted like steppe, toxic and orion)

Someone (maybe the mystical Nightfish) decided to turn it into a wheel with opposites dealing with temperatures. Making it into a wheel allows for an easy gameplay mechanic that we can start baseing technology and races on.

Its really completely arbitrary what we call the planets. It could be this.

Code: Select all

 
                1
              /    \
             2      3     10
             |       |
             4      5
               \   /
                 6  
Where each race uses 10 as Perfect, and the races are classified by their number.

As it stands now I think our EP Wheel is just fine, no problems have come up with the option A and the number of habitible planets needs to be fairly limited to make expansion hard. (I think we will need to change the galaxy generation code a few times to ensure an even start of everyone, Maybe assign certain weights to each planet.)

But otherwise why rock the boat?
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Geoff the Medio
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#20 Post by Geoff the Medio »

PowerCrazy wrote:(A few were omitted like steppe, toxic and orion)
Toxic is an environment in the current design...
Making it into a wheel allows for an easy gameplay mechanic that we can start baseing technology and races on.
Nobody (I think) is seriously suggested scrapping the wheel... Just a few additions (Methane), some rewording for clarity (Radiated is hot) and a few changes to the order.
As it stands now I think our EP Wheel is just fine, no problems have come up with the option A and the number of habitible planets needs to be fairly limited to make expansion hard.
The problem that has come up is that with only the three classes on the wheel, you can't distinguish between planets two away and four away on the wheel in terms of habitability. This may actually mean that more planets would be habitable, making expansion easier (in the v0.2 build, any non-gas planet is habitable). This could be resolved by making all planets 2 or more away on the wheel uninhabitable, but eventually the player will get tech to make them habitable, and we're back in the same situation. Adding one more degree of suitability is much more flexible...

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#21 Post by PowerCrazy »

You can always add more degrees. We could have planets that were thousands of steps apart, but how much good would it do?

The way I see it is this. We use option B. At the beginning of the game Each race has three types of planets it can colonize. Near the midgame, the tech tree is designed such that "poor" planets can be colonized. Finally at end game, all planets can be colonized.

Problems with adding more planet types:

We have to make each type of planet (except gaia) occur with the same frequency. If we do not then races that are not terran norms will have either an advantage or disadvantage depending on which side of the wheel gets emphasized during galaxy generation. This makes it so that if races can colonize 2 or 3 steps away on the wheel there will be too many planets that are colonizable (which IMO is a bad thing).

Your system (I assume that Good, Adequate and Poor are all colonizable.)
2/3 of the entire galaxy is availible to each race at the start of the game.
3/3 Is availible by end game?

Or if Poor is not colonizable at the beginning.
5/9 at beginning
7/9 at middle
9/9 at end

Option B
1/3 of the galaxy is availible at the start of the game
5/9 of the galaxy by midgame
9/9 of the galaxy at endgame.

Thus with yours too much of the galaxy is availible to each race too early in the game, and there is not really a reason to research those better colonizing techs as they only add 2/9 more of the galaxy. With option B your number of availible planets almost doubles each time you discover those techs. Which creates an impetus for conflict and discovery.
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Geoff the Medio
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#22 Post by Geoff the Medio »

I assume "your system" refers to what drek labelled "Geoff version above", but I actually proposed both this and B. The argument in the above post was disagreeing with your claim that "no problems have come up with the option A", and was not explicitly pro-B or pro-"Geoff version above".
PowerCrazy wrote:Your system (I assume that Good, Adequate and Poor are all colonizable.)
2/3 of the entire galaxy is availible to each race at the start of the game.
3/3 Is availible by end game?
Where do you get 2/3 at the start of the game? If you could colonize 0, 1 or 2 spots away, you'd have 5/9. If you could colonize 0 to 3 spots away, you'd have 7/9.

Also, one of the options for "Geoff version above" was to start the game like this:

Code: Select all

           tny sml med lrg hge    dist
Superb     10  20  25  30  35    (gaia)
Optimal    4   8   12  16  20    on-EP
Good       2   4   6   8   10    1-away
Adequate   1   2   3   4   5     2-away
Poor       0   0   0   0   0     3-away
Hostile    0   0   0   0   0     4-away
Which is exactly equivalent to option B at the start of the game. The only difference is that there's more flexibility long term, as you can make poor planets habitable without making the hostile ones habitable.
Thus with yours too much of the galaxy is availible to each race too early in the game, and there is not really a reason to research those better colonizing techs as they only add 2/9 more of the galaxy. With option B your number of availible planets almost doubles each time you discover those techs. Which creates an impetus for conflict and discovery.
Consider that there's more to a degree of planet suitability than yes/no habitable. Adequate planets in the above chart start with the absoulte minimum maximum populations, and would have rather large penalties to farming / health and such as well. The fact that you technically can put a colony on a planet doesn't necessarily make it worth your while to do so.

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#23 Post by PowerCrazy »

Well by "your system" I was referring to what Drek said. Sure it may not be worth colonizing a planet in the short term economically speaking, but in the long run every planet you can get will make you better off. If every planet is habitable at the beginning of the game it makes it a rush to see who can colonize the most planets the fastest.

If you just remove 2/3 of the planets from the equation at the beginning of the game, it helps keep races a little more seperate, and shifts the early focus of the game form blind colonizing to scouting.

So I guess where I differ is that I think from a gameplay approach that all planets that can be colonized should be. So I look at your revised proposal and see 2/3 of all the planets colonizable at the beginning of the game, and I get a little frightened.
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#24 Post by Impaler »

Good Point Geoff, we realy want to be looking at the Max Population potential.

In the scheem you just described 2 Good = 1 Optimal and 2 Adequate = 1 Good.

That means that on a size 9 wheel your max pop potential is 2.5/9

With the rotation based terrafroming aproatch I sugjested that number incresses as follows

Level 1 - 4.5/9
Level 2 - 6.5/9
Level 3 - 8/9
Level 4 - 9/9

As you start to encroatch on the opposite side of the whell from both directions their are no longer any uninhabitable planets so the returns deminish. Infact their might as well be no 4th level considering how little return their is. Also it begs the questions SHOULD you be able to turn every planet in the Galaxy to your Optimal by the games end?
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#25 Post by Geoff the Medio »

PowerCrazy wrote:...in the long run every planet you can get will make you better off.
Not necessarily. Maintaining a non-productive colony would be a drain on the whole empire's resources. There's also the cost of the colony ship itself, and possibly the lost productivity of the population you put on it.

IMO things should be set up so that colonizing a barely habitable planet isn't worthwhile unless there's something extra special on that planet, like a special resource or empire-wide bonus or a religious relic that makes a native group on another planet you own happy, or other such things. Just settling any planet you're technically allowed to should be a waste of resources.
Impaler wrote:...SHOULD you be able to turn every planet in the Galaxy to your Optimal by the games end?
You're ignoring an important part of the equation here: terraforming. Eventually, you'll be able to change all the planets into environments suitable for your race, so it won't matter what the max population is on a planet that's 3 or 4 from your race's preferred environment.

Also, presumably you'll eventually be able to destroy and create planets anyway. At that points, there's not so much lost game balance in being able to inhabit any of the ones that are already there...

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#26 Post by Ellestar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:IMO things should be set up so that colonizing a barely habitable planet isn't worthwhile unless there's something extra special on that planet, like a special resource or empire-wide bonus or a religious relic that makes a native group on another planet you own happy, or other such things. Just settling any planet you're technically allowed to should be a waste of resources.
With current formulas in V.3. New colony produces X colony ships in Y turns.

Code: Select all

Planet size: Average
Turn	Optimal	Adequate	Terrible	Homeworld
31		1			-			-			7
43		2,8		1			-				10
60		5,5		2,67			1			14
So, with optimal planets a player can double a number of planets significantly faster, but if you count a homeworld, it's not that important. Colonization will be delayed by colony ship en route time, homeworld will produce a lot of colony ships far away from "borders" with good uncolonized planets, planets add research to a research pool immediately. So to maximize research it's not that bad to colonize all planets, unless there will be something more efficient to do.
Impaler wrote:...SHOULD you be able to turn every planet in the Galaxy to your Optimal by the games end?
IMHO no. It's boring to colonize a lots of additional planets, game progresses slow enough, colonization phase is long gone, everything is already explored. It's just a technical task - build colony ships and send them to planets.
IMHO it's better to make terraforming techs so they will significantly improve already existing planets, no need to make boring things and same efficiency of technology.
Also, that way it will be possible to "exchange planets" with other civilizations - if they can use some planets you can't use, then you make an agreement that you're colonizing planets that are bad for another civilization and vice versa.

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#27 Post by noelte »

So, with optimal planets a player can double a number of planets significantly faster, but if you count a homeworld, it's not that important. Colonization will be delayed by colony ship en route time, homeworld will produce a lot of colony ships far away from "borders" with good uncolonized planets, planets add research to a research pool immediately. So to maximize research it's not that bad to colonize all planets, unless there will be something more efficient to do
That's an balancing issue.
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#28 Post by drek »

So, with optimal planets a player can double a number of planets significantly faster, but if you count a homeworld, it's not that important. Colonization will be delayed by colony ship en route time, homeworld will produce a lot of colony ships far away from "borders" with good uncolonized planets, planets add research to a research pool immediately. So to maximize research it's not that bad to colonize all planets, unless there will be something more efficient to do
Not sure I understand this. Actually, pretty sure I don't.

Under the current system, colonizing all planets is suicide. An empire simply wouldn't have enough food to pass around to all the non-producing colonies.

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#29 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Topic from tech categories thread I thought I should put here...
drek wrote:We "terraform" the planet a little each day...


That's another problem with the EP wheel as it is now. How does terraforming work? Currently there's no transition stage between any two adjacent environment types, so in practice, a terraforming project to change environment would just be a long project that suddenly changes the environment of a planet when it's done. This seems rather odd to me.

Of course, I'm assuming that terraforming can actually change the environment of a planet, rather than just being a modification to the environment. By this, I mean a "Swamp" planet would be "Swamp" forever, never changing to "Ocean" or "Toxic" (depending which was prefereable for your race). But it would be possible, with a terraforming project, to create various sorts of specials of differeing function / effectiveness that would give the planet some part of the benefits that being "Ocean" or "Toxic" would. This can be done in much smaller gradations than switching the whole EP.

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#30 Post by noelte »

Actually, that's another problem with the EP wheel as it is now. How does terraforming work? Currently there's no transition stage between any two adjacent environment types, so in practice, a terraforming project to change environment would just be a long project that suddenly changes the environment of a planet when it's done. This seems rather odd to me.
I had the same thought. We could stick with the effect of immediate change. This way you have to plan on the long shot when doing terraforming.

On the other hand we might want to use an alternative that allowes a more smooth environment change. In this case we have to use another representation of planet hability-value, on which base the displayed e-type is calculated.

We could maybe splitt the planet values into
1 - atmosphere (none,oxigen,methan,toxic, .....)
2 - temeratur (cold,warm,hot, ....)
3 - radiation (none,low,high,....)

in this case i don't know how to calculate if the planet is classified as Terran/Swamp/...

I like this idea because it adds much value to fo without doing to much trouble. It easy to realize. Races could differe on their planet preferences much more.
Last edited by noelte on Thu Sep 23, 2004 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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