Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

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

Moderator: Oberlus

Post Reply
Message
Author
Telos
Space Squid
Posts: 50
Joined: Thu May 09, 2013 4:46 am

Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#1 Post by Telos »

I really like the flavor of organic ships. Unfortunately, the game's current execution falls a bit flat for me. Here are some of the main failings I see, and simple suggestions for improving them.

(1) All organic ships should grow and regrow. One of the main things that's distinctive and flavorful about organic ships is their ability to grow and regrow structure and fuel. Unfortunately, half the organic line lack this feature. I think all organic ships, even hollowed out "zombie" ones, should have some degree of regrowth each turn, and probably also some degree of growth over time.

(2) Distinguish from Robo-ships. The ability to regrow structure also feels less distinctive for organic ships when this ability is done just as well or better in the robotic line, so I would also suggest significantly scaling back this feature from the robo line. The basic robotic ship is pretty much an always-build for me, because its only 24 additional RP off a must-have early tech and requires only a dockyard that comes for free in your cap, and because, aside from being a tad pricy, this ship is pretty clearly better than any alternative that comes anywhere near as soon. I don't think there's any need for the robo ship to dabble in organic ships' specialty too. (2a) So I would remove the robo ship's structure-regrowth. I think the robo ship would still be balanced enough after that "nerf", but it could be slightly cheapened if needed. Later the robo line offers an improved robo ship with nano-robotic repairs. I'm happy having self-repair as a unique ability for this ship, but I wouldn't want it to be nearly so strong as the best offering from the organic line, which is supposed to be the master of self-repair. (2b) So I'd suggest making the nano-robotic ship have something like a flat +5 repair per turn, rather than structure doubling. (2c) I would also suggest removing the free orbital dockyard, and perhaps even tying its construction to an early tech, probably robotic production. This change would make it much less of a no-brainer to go robo in the early game, and would make it comparatively more inviting to take an alternative route instead.

(3) Let organic ships grow bigger! It's flavorful to allow organic ships to start out as fragile babies and eventually grow into ancient juggernauts. However it's disappointing when, after taking lots of care to allow your organic ships to survive, even when fully grown, they're still puny compared to the ships from other lines. As a first approximation, I would suggest doubling the growth period and growth amounts of organic ships. This would allow organics to offer a genuine tradeoff between early vulnerability and actual later strength, not just between early vulnerability and later not-quite-so-much-vulnerability.

(4) Make growth matter more. As we imagine organic ships gradually growing larger, it's sort of disappointing that they just stick with the same set of armaments they had as babies. I don't think there's any feasible way of having larger ships grow additional slots. However, it probably would be fairly feasible, e.g., to make a tech that allows organic ships to gain a +1 level weapons promotion once they reach a certain age or size. E.g., I might make this tech cost 200 RP and put it as having Lifecycle Manipulation (growth) and Organic War Adaptation (organic/weapons) as prerequisites.

(5) Give organics a flavorful armored carapace option for internal slots. Organics are distinguished as having less innate structure than other lines, less external slots to carry armor than other lines, and less access to armor and shields research than some other lines (asteroid line and energy line, respectively) which ends up making their fragility a significant disadvantage. I would suggest offering organic ships easier access to a distinctive armor option, one that can ride in the internal slots that organics tend to have in excess, but the game, in its current alpha state, makes hard to fill. I would suggest calling this something like Regenerative Carapace, making it cost about 100 RP, with prerequisites Xenological Genetics (growth, 150RP) and Contrived Symbiosis (organic ships, 32RP) and having the effect be +12 max structure and +2 structure regen per turn, for a construction cost of about 5PP. (If feasible, I might also make it grow out slowly over the course of several turns. One way of doing this might be to have it modify max-structure, but not newly produced structure.) This would be roughly comparable to diamond and rock armor, but weaker and with a regeneration effect that is highly flavorful for organics. In the flavor text, I'd justify using an internal slot by describing this is a symbiotic relation with some sort of space turtle that is made to have its internal organs live inside the ship and to grow its carapace entwined around the outside of the ship. I'd be fine with allowing this on non-organic ships, if they want to dip into organic research. However, there may be some concerns about people building too-cheap damage sponges by stacking these in ships with numerous internal slots (like the endosymbiotic or camo-asteroid), so if that turns out to be a pressing concern, or perhaps just for flavor reasons, it might make sense to make multiple copies of this not stack.

(6) Provide techs to increase growth-rate. One big disincentive against using organic hulls later in the game is that they are born with such low structure, and won't have time to grow much structure until after the game is already decided. To help make organic ships usable later in the game, I would suggest making techs that increase their growth rate. For example, I would be tempted to put double-growth rate for all organic ships as an additional effect for Mega-Fauna Endocrine Systems, and to double it again with Controlled Ravenous Bioadaptation. (These already have names and prerequisites that seem pretty appropriate, or you could add new techs that do this, or you could let these unlock yet more shipyard additions that have this effect.) Remember that this is a game where at the same level in the tech tree, you can also be discovering "Pure Energy Metabolism" so the idea of growing your space watermelons a bit faster shouldn't seem all that outlandish!

Thanks for your consideration and suggestions!

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13586
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Telos wrote:(6) Provide techs to increase growth-rate. One big disincentive against using organic hulls later in the game is that they are born with such low structure, and won't have time to grow much structure until after the game is already decided. To help make organic ships usable later in the game, I would suggest making techs that increase their growth rate. For example, I would be tempted to put double-growth rate for all organic ships as an additional effect for Mega-Fauna Endocrine Systems, and to double it again with Controlled Ravenous Bioadaptation. (These already have names and prerequisites that seem pretty appropriate, or you could add new techs that do this, or you could let these unlock yet more shipyard additions that have this effect.)
What about a building that boosts the growth rate of organic ships located in the same system? Perhaps this has some location requirement that is moderately rare, like a growth special in the system, or a particular star type, or maybe the amount of boost depends on the distance to the nearest populated system in starlane jumps (further away -> faster growth).

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

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#3 Post by MatGB »

Telos wrote: (1) All organic ships should grow and regrow. One of the main things that's distinctive and flavorful about organic ships is their ability to grow and regrow structure and fuel. Unfortunately, half the organic line lack this feature. I think all organic ships, even hollowed out "zombie" ones, should have some degree of regrowth each turn, and probably also some degree of growth over time.
I'm very inclined to agree with this: I'm thinking of tying the rates to the startype the ship is in and a few other things to add a bit more flavour, and some should be less good at it than others, but overall it would be best if all had the growth/repair trait.
(2) Distinguish from Robo-ships. The ability to regrow structure also feels less distinctive for organic ships when this ability is done just as well or better in the robotic line, so I would also suggest significantly scaling back this feature from the robo line. The basic robotic ship is pretty much an always-build for me, because its only 24 additional RP off a must-have early tech and requires only a dockyard that comes for free in your cap, and because, aside from being a tad pricy, this ship is pretty clearly better than any alternative that comes anywhere near as soon. I don't think there's any need for the robo ship to dabble in organic ships' specialty too.
Where did you get the idea that self repair was meant to be the Organic specialty? It's meant to be the Robotic specialty, organics are grow over time, robotics have built in repair facilities. They're already distinguished in other ways, organics are faster and have stealth, robotics are tougher and slower. More differentiation I'm happy with, but if we were to insist only one line got self-repair, it'd be the two main robotic hulls (and I might give them a third, bigger hull as well) and then the Logistics Facilitator.

Hint: to look at the main strength of a line, look at the flagship ability for that line—robotics get fleet repair, asteroids get improved protection, energy get refuelling and organics get vision and stealth.
(2a) So I would remove the robo ship's structure-regrowth. I think the robo ship would still be balanced enough after that "nerf", but it could be slightly cheapened if needed.
Arguably, the base Robotic Hull is slightly too powerful at the moment, it probably needs a cost adjustment. Removing it's main feature isn't on the roadmap though.
(2c) I would also suggest removing the free orbital dockyard, and perhaps even tying its construction to an early tech, probably robotic production. This change would make it much less of a no-brainer to go robo in the early game, and would make it comparatively more inviting to take an alternative route instead.
I've actually considered this a few times, the reason it's there is to ensure that very early game fights aren't debilitating for newer players, especially if they're just using standard hulls. It's going to get a substantial buildcost increase at some point but I'm inclined to a different solution:

How about if robotic line hulls needed a robotics facility that unlocks with, say, robotic production? Keep it cheap, but separating the "every one needs them" drydock repair facilities out from the "people using this line want them" robotic production line would make sense.
(3) Let organic ships grow bigger! It's flavorful to allow organic ships to start out as fragile babies and eventually grow into ancient juggernauts. However it's disappointing when, after taking lots of care to allow your organic ships to survive, even when fully grown, they're still puny compared to the ships from other lines. As a first approximation, I would suggest doubling the growth period and growth amounts of organic ships. This would allow organics to offer a genuine tradeoff between early vulnerability and actual later strength, not just between early vulnerability and later not-quite-so-much-vulnerability.
I'm definitely planning to both introduce a bigger ship or two into the line and also make a few of the existing ships a bit bigger as well (either structure or slot numbers, possibly both). Some of them could also get bigger overall: note we already increased the growth rate for some of the ships not that long ago, I'd definitely be up for considering doing more at some point though.
(4) Make growth matter more. As we imagine organic ships gradually growing larger, it's sort of disappointing that they just stick with the same set of armaments they had as babies. I don't think there's any feasible way of having larger ships grow additional slots. However, it probably would be fairly feasible, e.g., to make a tech that allows organic ships to gain a +1 level weapons promotion once they reach a certain age or size. E.g., I might make this tech cost 200 RP and put it as having Lifecycle Manipulation (growth) and Organic War Adaptation (organic/weapons) as prerequisites.
Hmm, you mean have a built in shooting bonus for older ships? That could be interesting to work through.
(5) Give organics a flavorful armored carapace option for internal slots. Organics are distinguished as having less innate structure than other lines, less external slots to carry armor than other lines, and less access to armor and shields research than some other lines (asteroid line and energy line, respectively) which ends up making their fragility a significant disadvantage. I would suggest offering organic ships easier access to a distinctive armor option, one that can ride in the internal slots that organics tend to have in excess, but the game, in its current alpha state, makes hard to fill.
I would have some balance concerns here, but it's definitely not an out-of-the-question idea, a one-per-ship carapace that did something interesting (perhaps a sort-of shield/armour cross?) might be fun.
(6) Provide techs to increase growth-rate. One big disincentive against using organic hulls later in the game is that they are born with such low structure, and won't have time to grow much structure until after the game is already decided. To help make organic ships usable later in the game, I would suggest making techs that increase their growth rate. For example, I would be tempted to put double-growth rate for all organic ships as an additional effect for Mega-Fauna Endocrine Systems, and to double it again with Controlled Ravenous Bioadaptation. (These already have names and prerequisites that seem pretty appropriate, or you could add new techs that do this, or you could let these unlock yet more shipyard additions that have this effect.) Remember that this is a game where at the same level in the tech tree, you can also be discovering "Pure Energy Metabolism" so the idea of growing your space watermelons a bit faster shouldn't seem all that outlandish!
This I like the idea of, having growth rates be improvable so that you can build a nice strong fleet in the end game when you're up against Titans would be interesting.
Thanks for your consideration and suggestions!
Thank you for the feedback: I like a lot of it, and there are some interesting ideas. Naturally, I disagree with some, especially on teh main focus of the line, organics are meant to be fragile, sneaky hulls not self repairing monsters, for the most part, and work to differentiate them a bit more would be fun.

I definitely like the idea that organic hulls should benefit from being in a nice bright star system, and having buildings/specials that improve on that further would be cool.
Mat Bowles

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

Telos
Space Squid
Posts: 50
Joined: Thu May 09, 2013 4:46 am

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#4 Post by Telos »

MatGB wrote:Where did you get the idea that self repair was meant to be the Organic specialty? It's meant to be the Robotic specialty, organics are grow over time, robotics have built in repair facilities. They're already distinguished in other ways, organics are faster and have stealth, robotics are tougher and slower. More differentiation I'm happy with, but if we were to insist only one line got self-repair, it'd be the two main robotic hulls (and I might give them a third, bigger hull as well) and then the Logistics Facilitator.
Well, if you had asked me before coming into the game which was more likely to be able to heal damage, a living ship or a robotic ship, I definitely would have said the living ship. And even if you had asked me after having played the game a fair bit, I still would have said that self-repair was just one minor theme (among many) in the robotic line, being present in only 2 of the 5 ships of the line (not in spatial fux, self grav, or titan) and not so obviously in the flagship (whose flavor seems to involve logistics and stealth freighters, not some sort of self-repairing robots). In contrast, when I look at the organic line, I see lots of ships that have built in regeneration, and I see special explanations being given for why the ones that don't have regeneration don't, which served to confirm my independent expectation that living creatures should be able to heal themselves. So maybe that answers your question about where I got that idea from?

Regardless, I suppose it's up to the various developers to determine the strengths for each line, so you could make the robot line be all about self-healing if you wanted to. But honestly, this line is already so much a jack of all trades, this doesn't seem like a great idea to me. I mean it already has tremendously high structure ratings, quite high speed ratings, quite high fuel allotments, quite high numbers of external slots -- does it really need to be number one at self-repair too? Doesn't it make more sense for game balance to have the self-repair line be the low-HP line (making up for the low HP by repairing some of it between battles), and to have the massive-HP line need to travel for self-repair (to help counterbalance the advantage of their high HP)?

Anyway, glad we're on the same page regarding lots of the organic ship stuff.

Telos
Space Squid
Posts: 50
Joined: Thu May 09, 2013 4:46 am

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#5 Post by Telos »

MatGB wrote:I've actually considered [removing the free capitol drydock] a few times, the reason it's there is to ensure that very early game fights aren't debilitating for newer players, especially if they're just using standard hulls. It's going to get a substantial buildcost increase at some point but I'm inclined to a different solution:

How about if robotic line hulls needed a robotics facility that unlocks with, say, robotic production? Keep it cheap, but separating the "every one needs them" drydock repair facilities out from the "people using this line want them" robotic production line would make sense.
Proliferating buildings could be a fine solution, I suppose, though I'm generally a big fan of the ways in which game uses fewer buildings than other 4X games, so this would be kind of a step in the wrong direction, but only on a few planets, so not that big a deal.

Perhaps another solution to your concern for new players would be to allow the shipyard to repair basic ships? That would allow us to remove the free capitol drydock without penalizing new players very much, which would help to level the playing field between different families of hulls.

It might also make sense to have different avenues of repair be part of what differentiates the different ship families. Basic ships repair at shipyards. Robotic ships repair by using nanites and/or going back to drydocks. Organic ships heal their own damage over time, or perhaps can accelerate this by visiting an incubator or appropriately colored star (yellow, maybe?). Asteroid ships repair by going to asteroid processing units. Energy ships repair by spending a peaceful turn at a white/blue star. Something like that... This would help to flavorfully differentiate the different lines, and to alleviate the current weirdness that a drydock can repair all kinds of exotic ships that it would have no hope of building.

dbenage-cx
Programmer
Posts: 389
Joined: Sun Feb 14, 2016 12:08 am

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#6 Post by dbenage-cx »

MatGB wrote:Arguably, the base Robotic Hull is slightly too powerful at the moment, it probably needs a cost adjustment.
It could probably lose an external slot and then some cost reduction, maybe some tech to decrease the cost of generic hulls as well?
Though the loss of external slot has the side effect of boosting the usefulness of robotic interface shields, so some adjustment may be needed there.

Love some of the ideas here, I went so far as to give living organic ships their own traits and mood swings at one point (chance of special when produced), just for some uniqueness.
Telos wrote:Let organic ships grow bigger
Giving them a larger growth cap alone helps offset their small structure start.

Ophiuchus
Programmer
Posts: 3427
Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:01 am
Location: Wall IV

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#7 Post by Ophiuchus »

Maybe baby organic ships could be stopped from fighting/invading planets etc(?) and get a stealth bonus until it matures more?
In exchange for that build times for incubator(..) and the ships themselves could be lowered.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

Ophiuchus
Programmer
Posts: 3427
Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:01 am
Location: Wall IV

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#8 Post by Ophiuchus »

Ophiuchus wrote:Maybe baby organic ships could be stopped from fighting/invading planets etc(?) and get a stealth bonus until it matures more?
In exchange for that build times for incubator(..) and the ships themselves could be lowered.
Or always have organic ships loose stealth when they are getting "bigger" (i.e. growing hp).
This could mean a ship changes its role in its lifetime. E.g. the start being a first strike ship with almost no defense and later it can take a hit, but probably not first strike capable anymore.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

User avatar
labgnome
Juggernaut
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#9 Post by labgnome »

MatGB wrote:Where did you get the idea that self repair was meant to be the Organic specialty? It's meant to be the Robotic specialty, organics are grow over time, robotics have built in repair facilities. They're already distinguished in other ways, organics are faster and have stealth, robotics are tougher and slower. More differentiation I'm happy with, but if we were to insist only one line got self-repair, it'd be the two main robotic hulls (and I might give them a third, bigger hull as well) and then the Logistics Facilitator.

Hint: to look at the main strength of a line, look at the flagship ability for that line—robotics get fleet repair, asteroids get improved protection, energy get refuelling and organics get vision and stealth.
Honestly, the right now robotic line looks like something of a "waste-bin taxon" of ship design. Especially with the really big hulls and the really fast hulls (4 out of 7 designs) not getting the repair bonus. It kind of seems like the "other" category of ship design.

Also: with the talks about large hulls be too favored in the game I'd rather not see another gigantic starship introduced in any line right now. At least until after the upkeep mechanic is changed so that they are at less of an advantage.
MatGB wrote:How about if robotic line hulls needed a robotics facility that unlocks with, say, robotic production? Keep it cheap, but separating the "every one needs them" drydock repair facilities out from the "people using this line want them" robotic production line would make sense.
Telos wrote:Proliferating buildings could be a fine solution, I suppose, though I'm generally a big fan of the ways in which game uses fewer buildings than other 4X games, so this would be kind of a step in the wrong direction, but only on a few planets, so not that big a deal.
We could move the nanorobotic shipyard back (and maybe make it just "robotic") so that each sub-line of the robotic line has one production facility. This I think addresses both issues at once.
Telos wrote:Perhaps another solution to your concern for new players would be to allow the shipyard to repair basic ships? That would allow us to remove the free capitol drydock without penalizing new players very much, which would help to level the playing field between different families of hulls.
I think that production and repair should be separated. I often find myself building lots of shipyards to get the drydocks to repair my ships. I'd rather have a pricier shipyard but a separate repair facility. So how about keep the drydock, but also allow it to be built without a shipyard (maybe with a rename). You realistically should only need one shipyard per ship-building species in your empire, but fleet repair is something that's a lot more useful to have everywhere.
MatGB wrote:I definitely like the idea that organic hulls should benefit from being in a nice bright star system, and having buildings/specials that improve on that further would be cool.
How about have the organic hulls benefit from what kind of species is piloting them. So lithic piloted ships would get a benefit from lithic metabolism specials, robotic piloted ships from the robotic metabolism special, organic piloted from the obvious choice, and phototrophic piloted ships would get the solar-type bonus. This would also make your species choice more "flavorful" if you went with the organic line. Also some cool text or even a special part fpr them having a symbiotic relationship with their pilots could tie this in.
Ophiuchus wrote:
Ophiuchus wrote:Maybe baby organic ships could be stopped from fighting/invading planets etc(?) and get a stealth bonus until it matures more?
In exchange for that build times for incubator(..) and the ships themselves could be lowered.
Or always have organic ships loose stealth when they are getting "bigger" (i.e. growing hp).
This could mean a ship changes its role in its lifetime. E.g. the start being a first strike ship with almost no defense and later it can take a hit, but probably not first strike capable anymore.
I think we may be missing an obvious choice here: the organic ships are supposed to be based off study of the in-game space-monsters. Maybe have the already "bigger" hulls in the line be the more mature forms of some of the other hulls. We have nine designs already, so we could have three baby hulls, three juvenile hulls and three adult hulls.
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.

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

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#10 Post by MatGB »

labgnome wrote: Honestly, the right now robotic line looks like something of a "waste-bin taxon" of ship design. Especially with the really big hulls and the really fast hulls (4 out of 7 designs) not getting the repair bonus. It kind of seems like the "other" category of ship design.
I think that's sort of how they started: your involvement with the project predates mine but IIRC this line was the first line introduced and there were two subsets, the "Constructed" hulls, which get referenced in some weird places in documentation and the "Robotic" hulls, with both meant to represent a natural progression from the then small/medium/large line. Although I did divide the tech line up into two when I did my first major balance pass I never really did any work on trying to make them both a coherent line and a properly realised grouping in the way that, for example, the Organic and Asteroid lines are. I do recall that they were without doubt the most overcosted of all the hull types.
Also: with the talks about large hulls be too favored in the game I'd rather not see another gigantic starship introduced in any line right now. At least until after the upkeep mechanic is changed so that they are at less of an advantage.
Ahem ;-)

Basically, I agree that more big hulls shouldn't be introduced until Upkeep is sorted but as we both a) have an open, playable PR that I'm testing that basically does this and b) have plans for a radical overhaul of upkeep mechanics in general relatively soon it means I can start thinking/planning stuff I'd like to add/refine, to include some late game viable small/fast hulls and some bigger hulls for different purposes. I doubt they'll be introduced in the immediate future, but planning for them or at least discussing the basics can start.

My first step is almost certainly to increase the slots in a small number of organic hull ships in some way, Ravenous would work better with 6 external slots, for example.
We could move the nanorobotic shipyard back (and maybe make it just "robotic") so that each sub-line of the robotic line has one production facility. This I think addresses both issues at once.
That is a very good idea and falls into the "so obvious I should kick myself for not thinking of it" category, thank you—I'm also wondering if we should have a tech for the buildings then follow on techs for the hulls, but that's a very nascent wonder right now.
I think that production and repair should be separated. I often find myself building lots of shipyards to get the drydocks to repair my ships. I'd rather have a pricier shipyard but a separate repair facility. So how about keep the drydock, but also allow it to be built without a shipyard (maybe with a rename). You realistically should only need one shipyard per ship-building species in your empire, but fleet repair is something that's a lot more useful to have everywhere.
This could be viable and doable, but some would require some significant AI work (at the moment I'm avoiding anything that would need the AI team to work on as they're swamped), definitely worth speccinf out I think.
How about have the organic hulls benefit from what kind of species is piloting them. So lithic piloted ships would get a benefit from lithic metabolism specials, robotic piloted ships from the robotic metabolism special, organic piloted from the obvious choice, and phototrophic piloted ships would get the solar-type bonus. This would also make your species choice more "flavorful" if you went with the organic line. Also some cool text or even a special part fpr them having a symbiotic relationship with their pilots could tie this in.
This could be worth considering: I definitely want to give the Setinon species some advantages for when they're using Organic line hulls, their backgrounds says they should be excellent at using them but currently there are no advantages.
Or always have organic ships loose stealth when they are getting "bigger" (i.e. growing hp).
This could mean a ship changes its role in its lifetime. E.g. the start being a first strike ship with almost no defense and later it can take a hit, but probably not first strike capable anymore.
I think we may be missing an obvious choice here: the organic ships are supposed to be based off study of the in-game space-monsters. Maybe have the already "bigger" hulls in the line be the more mature forms of some of the other hulls. We have nine designs already, so we could have three baby hulls, three juvenile hulls and three adult hulls.[/quote]
Hmm, that might be an approach, but it would definitely involve more work for the AI team.

Basically we have some good "implement soon" ideas, some good things we could plan for relatively soon and some stuff that would require a bigger rewrite mechanically that could be really worht at least considering. I like this thread.
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
labgnome
Juggernaut
Posts: 833
Joined: Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:57 pm

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#11 Post by labgnome »

MatGB wrote: I think that's sort of how they started: your involvement with the project predates mine but IIRC this line was the first line introduced and there were two subsets, the "Constructed" hulls, which get referenced in some weird places in documentation and the "Robotic" hulls, with both meant to represent a natural progression from the then small/medium/large line. Although I did divide the tech line up into two when I did my first major balance pass I never really did any work on trying to make them both a coherent line and a properly realised grouping in the way that, for example, the Organic and Asteroid lines are. I do recall that they were without doubt the most overcosted of all the hull types.
I think we must have gotten involved right around the same time. If I did get involved earlier it wasn't by much. I will say that if they did start that way, then maybe splitting off the flux and granitic line into their own lines, or wrapping them a line that also incorporated the xentronium hull might be a good idea. Though you'd be right in assessing that the robotic line could use another hull (or two or three) if we did that, I'm still not sold on a bigger hull though.
MatGB wrote:Ahem ;-)
Okay, this is off-topic, but where can a I go to get some kind of resource to make heads or tails of github? I was there for the migration and didn't jump on because I actually find it less legible than sourceforge.
MatGB wrote:Basically, I agree that more big hulls shouldn't be introduced until Upkeep is sorted but as we both a) have an open, playable PR that I'm testing that basically does this and b) have plans for a radical overhaul of upkeep mechanics in general relatively soon it means I can start thinking/planning stuff I'd like to add/refine, to include some late game viable small/fast hulls and some bigger hulls for different purposes. I doubt they'll be introduced in the immediate future, but planning for them or at least discussing the basics can start.
I'm concerned that if a nerf for larger hulls comes in conjunction with the introduction of more large hull designs that it might negate the efforts to balance their size issue out. Though on the subject of large hulls: I will say the only design I'd like to see would be an immobile starbase. At least to test-out the idea of "space stations".
MatGB wrote:This could be worth considering: I definitely want to give the Setinon species some advantages for when they're using Organic line hulls, their backgrounds says they should be excellent at using them but currently there are no advantages.
How about a "biological production" tag for species, that would give them a cost decrease for the organic ships, and possibly the transformer, especially if that's going to get a substantial cost increase overall? George and Trith already get special features, and if we do get an early get alien planets without troops option, having the Setinon get a special feature as a playable species would be fitting. FYI: I think Phinnert (at least lore wise and only with it being applied to the transformer) are also a fit for this, maybe the Ugmors and possibly my work-in-progress Luftballonts.
MatGB wrote:Basically we have some good "implement soon" ideas, some good things we could plan for relatively soon and some stuff that would require a bigger rewrite mechanically that could be really worht at least considering. I like this thread.
I really need to figure out github now that my computer situation no longer sucks.
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.

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

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#12 Post by Voker57 »

Organic spaceships have a pretty good niche right now: they provide a versatile set of cheap, fast, stealthy, not reliant on environment hulls. I disagree that they all should grow, but growing rate should be bumped up indeed, it's basically useless currently.
Team S.M.A.C.: destroying dreams of multiplayer 4x since 2017.

Ophiuchus
Programmer
Posts: 3427
Joined: Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:01 am
Location: Wall IV

Re: Ideas to Improve Organic Ships

#13 Post by Ophiuchus »

One nice touch concerning hp growth would be using a sigmoid growth curve like in earths animals.
We could produce the ships faster and weaker (infants) and they would have a lot of growth at the beginning.
Maybe they could also die of old age (after getting a sitrep warning about this, maybe three turns before death).

One could add some internal ship parts which speed up the growth but also lead to an earlier death.
Any code or patches in anything posted here is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.

Look, ma... four combat bouts!

Post Reply