User:Geoff the Medio/Gripes with v0.3 DD
Regarding Nutrient Distribution, I'd prefer a more continuous scale of health / growth bonuses / penalties due to food availability.
I suggest:
If a planet's food supply is less than its population, the planet's health meter is capped, and the health meter has a penalty applied:
(health penalty) = -20 * ( (pop) - (food) ) / pop)
(health cap) = 10 * (food) / (pop)
If a planet's food supply is greater than or equal to its population, and less than or equal to twice its population, health is capped, but there is no health bonus or penalty:
(health cap) = 10 * (food) / (pop)
If a planet's food supply is more than twice its population, there is no specific health cap, and health receives a bonus:
(health bonus) = 20 * ( (food) - 2 * (pop) ) / (pop)
(health cap) = 100
A max bonus for extra food could be set... say +40, after which extra food is no help.
Edit: Fixed up numbers so 20 farming (meaning 2 food / pop point) is "breakeven", as it should be.
Regarding the construction meter,
I think the construction meter should grow at a constant rate, say 0.5 / turn, up to its max value. Meters are "production per unit of population", so meter growth is "increase in production per unit of population", so the construction meter is a measure something "per units of population". It seems unnecessary to include the population in the rate of growth of something that is itself a measure "per units of population". I also don't see what the advantage of the more complicated growth formula is for gameplay. The meter growth already starts slow, and grows with construction... what's the need to change the rate of growth of the rate of growth of meters...?
The migration section is pointless at this time. Unless the system will be fleshed out in a meaningful way, it should be removed.
The following comments on planet environments should be removed or coloured green, as they have no meaning at this time: "An Asteroid Mining Base can be built here." "A Gas Giant Tap can be built here."
Adding, in green, "Later, effects may depend on star colour" or somesuch would be good, after "Star colors have no gameplay effect..."
Starlane generation has not been sufficiently discussed and decided on to have any use for the different options for frequencies for different lengths of starlanes. Until that happens, the only option here should be a single number for starlane frequency.
The descriptive text for the approximate radius of various different planet slots seems a bit odd. Why not use 0 = mercury distance, 1 = venus, 2 = earth, 3 = mars, 4 = asteroid belt, 5 = jupiter (and so on).
Regarding Ragnar's comment, I think the health bonuses are too big for all environment preferences. I previously commented on the value for optimal, but it applies to all of them.
I'd like to see an additional star colour: "Planetary Nebula", or just "Nebula", which is a big cloud of gas that hasn't yet condensed into a star and planets. This can wait for after v0.3 though, at which time I'd like to redo the whole star colour system.
Galaxy shape options seem to have been somewhat reduced from the current version... How about: -elliptical -rings and spokes -concentric rings -solid string -branching tree -core and sattelites
Rename "Radiated" to "Irradiated"
Contradiction: "Each empire will start the game with one planet of at least large size, with 20 population set to ‘balanced’ and 3 missile bases." "At the start of the game each Homeworld's Current Population is set to 75% of Max Population."
This should not be done: "2. Combine all fleets at each system into consolidated fleets for each empire." It's fine for fleets to fight as a single massed fleet, but when the battle's over, or if there isn't one, the fleets should remain as the player set them.
What does this mean: "Planetary environment preference > X" (possible requirement to make a building on a planet) Does this mean that the empire that owns the planet must have a given environment preference? Or does it mean the planet environment must be within X environments on the EP wheel of the empire's preferred environment, or some other environment (the preferred environment for the building itself)?
drek suggested I post some altneratives for construction meter and population growth.
As discussed here: http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13320#13320 and here: http://www.freeorion.org/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:V3_ScratchPad#Resource_&_Construction_Meters_Growth
I think construction should grow at 0.5 / turn, every turn, up to its max.
Edit: somebody said growth not dependent on current population was previously rejected, so I suggested some other formulas here: http://www.freeorion.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13908#13908 ) The rest of this post, before "Also:", is thus probably irrelivant. /Edit
A simpler, less hard-to-see population growth curve would work similarly, except with growth rate dependent on the growth / health meter. Something like this might work:
health meter = 20 -> break even
each health meter point above 20 -> + 0.1 pop / turn
each health meter point below 20 but above 10 -> - 0.1 pop a turn
each health meter point below 10, loose more and more pop (- 0.1 more per point per point), so
30 -> +1.0 / turn ... 21 -> + 0.1 / turn 20 -> 0 growth 19 -> -0.1 / turn ... 11 -> -0.9 / turn 10 -> -1.0 / turn 9 -> -1.2 / turn 8 -> -1.5 / turn 7 -> -1.9 / turn 6 -> -2.4 / turn 5 -> -3.0 / turn 4 -> -3.7 / turn 3 -> -4.5 / turn 2 -> -5.4 / turn 1 -> -6.4 / turn 0 -> all pop dies
Also: We could scale up population by a factor of 10, so that rather than using gradations of 0.1 above, everything would be whole numbers for growth. Then again, various factors could modify things unexpectedly, putting us back into factions anyway... so maybe it doesn't matter...
IMO there should be another class of planet environment quality. Just having Optimal, Adequate and Terrible means that a planet two environments away from a race's environment preference is just as good/bad as one that's on the opposite side of the wheel. This strikes me as odd...
Assuming there was already big debate on this, I suppose it's not likely to change. But if there wasn't and it might, I'd suggest calling the environments that are two away from optimal "Poor" and three or more away "Terrible" (and adding all the various other things that an extra category would require).
A separate suggestion is to rename "Terrible" to "Hostile"
IMO "Poor" is better for 2 away than "Inhospitible" ... latter is a tad too many syllables, and is not clearly better than "Hostile".
At the start of the game, Poor/Inhospitable planets should be nearly as useless as Hostile ones. With advancing tech, they should become more useful, whereas hostile would remain nearly useless much longer.
Suggested pop limits for Hostile are half of the current for Terrible, so we'd have:
tny sml med lrg hge
Superb 10 20 25 30 35
Optimal 8 16 20 25 30
Adequate 4 8 12 16 20
Poor 2 4 6 8 10
Hostile 1 2 3 4 5
Then again, we could make Hostile start with all 0's (be uninhabitable) until appropriate tech is discovered.
Oh yeah, and rename "Average" planet size to "Medium". "Average" implies the mean, which isn't necessarily true, as the statistical weighting of planet sizes may put the "Average" above or below the middlemost size in the list.
New Suggestions:
At start of game:
tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise 10 20 25 30 35
Good 8 16 20 25 30
Adequate 1 2 3 4 5
Poor 0 0 0 0 0
Hostile 0 0 0 0 0
After one or two initial techs:
tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise 10 20 25 30 35
Good 8 16 20 25 30
Adequate 2 4 6 8 10
Poor 0 0 0 0 0
Hostile 0 0 0 0 0
After a few techs:
tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise 10 20 25 30 35
Good 8 16 20 25 30
Adequate 4 8 12 16 20
Poor 1 2 3 4 5
Hostile 0 0 0 0 0
After a few more techs:
tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise 10 20 25 30 35
Good 8 16 20 25 30
Adequate 6 12 16 20 25
Poor 2 4 6 8 10
Hostile 0 0 0 0 0
After even more techs:
tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise 10 20 25 30 35
Good 8 16 20 25 30
Adequate 8 16 20 25 30
Poor 4 8 12 16 20
Hostile 1 2 3 4 5
Near the end of the game:
tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise 10 20 25 30 35
Good 8 16 20 25 30
Adequate 8 16 20 25 30
Poor 6 12 16 20 25
Hostile 2 4 6 8 10
At the end of the game:
tny sml med lrg hge
Paradise 10 20 25 30 35
Good 8 16 20 25 30
(any non-gaia environment is good at the end of the game, and gaia remains better still... and unreachable by standard terraforming)
(Also, this is terraforming, so the best you can possibly do is to make it the same as your homeworld. This is not the place to improve beyond your homeworld's starting capacity)
