Author Topic: Civilian Ships  (Read 4609 times)

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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Civilian Ships
« on: April 24, 2008, 08:29:17 AM »
The civilian space centres are back in v3.1. This time though they will be building civilian shipping. So far I have implemented colony ships and will soon be adding civilian geo and grav survey ships and perhaps terraformers too. The chance of a civilian space centre appearing or increasing in size is dependent on the size of the population. Once the civilian space centre is in place, the chance of a ship being built is dependent on the level of the civilian space centre, the type of ship and the combined expansionism rating of the population species and the Empire-level government type.

I will probably play with the figures but at the moment the chance of a civilian space centre being built is equal to 1% per annum per 100m population. The chance of a colony ship being built at that space centre is 15% per annum x level of CSC x (Pop/Empire Expansion Rating / 100). For geo ships it is 6% and grav survey is 4%.

Civilian ships are actually still part of your Empire but you have to detect them as if they were alien ships. However, they will start with transponders active so you can still see the transponder even if they are out of sensor range. Of course, that could really be an alien ship mimicking the transponder so don?t entirely trust transponder-only contacts :)

Alien civilian ships will not look any different to your sensors than alien government-owned ships. In other words, you can only tell a ship is a civilian ship if it belongs to your own race. This was one of the issues I had with creating the concept of civilian shipping. If I set them up as a separate race then each alien race would really be two different ones and would be detected as such. Which led to the question of how aliens would be able to tell which ships were government owned and which were civilian. I finally hit on the idea of creating them as a subset of a race so other races couldn?t tell which ships were civilian. This meant some changes to the detection code as you now have to detect some of your ?own? ships.

Because you do not have direct control over civilian shipping, the civilian fleets and ships will not appear in any of the windows relating to racial shipping, such as the fleet, class and ship windows. They will not appear on the system map unless you detect them and they will be missing from the various tree-view displays, such as on the galactic map or the battle control window. You cannot give them orders or move them between fleets.

The class of ship that civilians will build will be a current (i.e. non-obsolete) racial class. So if the civilian space centre builds a colony ship, it will select one of your current colony ship designs.

Colony ships will decide for themselves what orders they have. They will look to load colonists at populations of 20m or more and unload them at colonies of less than 20m within four transits. They will select their destination based on the number of transits and will select the smallest colony if two are equally distant. They are aware of any infrastructure limitations on colony size and will not take colonists to a colony if that would exceed the capacity of any infrastructure. The colonists will be deducted from your colonies and the colony ships will refuel using your stockpiles of fuel. To offset this, each civilian space centre will produce an amount of fuel equal to twenty refineries by using stocks of Sorium obtained through civilian sources.

Although you cannot detect the civilian ships without sensors, you will be notified if a civilian colony ship loads or unloads colonists at one of your colonies and you will be informed of its intended destination when it departs a colony, on the basis that the ship commander would file a flight plan.

I haven't coded it yet but I intend to add an option to "nationlise" civilian shipping. This will add all civilian shipping to your Empire but there will be a lower chance of civilian shipping appearing in the future. Every time you nationlise the chance will decrease further (I am thinking of halving the chance for each nationalisation).

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline Laurence

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Re: Civilian Ships
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2008, 09:14:05 AM »
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
They will look to load colonists at populations of 20m or more and unload them at colonies of less than 20m within four transits.


If I understand properly, this means that the civilians will not create new colonies, only work with ones I've already created?

So I wanted to encourage civilians to grow on a good colony world I can just create a colony on that body and drop some infrastructure (if needed).  Then by the time I get around to manually colonizing the civilian ships may have already moved some people for me.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Laurence »
 

Offline schroeam

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Re: Civilian Ships
« Reply #2 on: April 26, 2008, 04:15:30 PM »
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
The civilian space centres are back in v3.1. This time though they will be building civilian shipping. So far I have implemented colony ships and will soon be adding civilian geo and grav survey ships and perhaps terraformers too. The chance of a civilian space centre appearing or increasing in size is dependent on the size of the population. Once the civilian space centre is in place, the chance of a ship being built is dependent on the level of the civilian space centre, the type of ship and the combined expansionism rating of the population species and the Empire-level government type.


As trade routes and freighter routes become established are we likely to see some independent entrepreneurs (pirates) from these civilian space centers?  If they have access to the most up to date civilian technology, some of the obsolete military tech may be on the market as well...
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by adradjool »
 

Offline Doug Olchefske

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Re: Civilian Ships
« Reply #3 on: April 26, 2008, 05:30:58 PM »
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
The civilian space centres are back in v3.1.

Steve


Darn it Steve, you're Osbourne-ing yourself again.

Start new game or wait? Hmm...
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Doug Olchefske »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Civilian Ships
« Reply #4 on: May 02, 2008, 03:53:06 AM »
Quote from: "Laurence"
Quote from: "Steve Walmsley"
They will look to load colonists at populations of 20m or more and unload them at colonies of less than 20m within four transits.

If I understand properly, this means that the civilians will not create new colonies, only work with ones I've already created?

So I wanted to encourage civilians to grow on a good colony world I can just create a colony on that body and drop some infrastructure (if needed).  Then by the time I get around to manually colonizing the civilian ships may have already moved some people for me.

Yes, that's the idea. I did consider letting colony ships setup new colonies as well but I thought they might pick some politically unfortunate locations, which is something the program can't figure out.

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: Civilian Ships
« Reply #5 on: May 02, 2008, 03:54:49 AM »
Quote from: "adradjool"
As trade routes and freighter routes become established are we likely to see some independent entrepreneurs (pirates) from these civilian space centers?  If they have access to the most up to date civilian technology, some of the obsolete military tech may be on the market as well...

This is something I may add later. Building the ships and giving them false transponder codes (which they switch off once out of range) is easy enough but pirating is more complex than the straightforward seek and destroy orders for precursors.

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline Bellerophon06

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« Reply #6 on: May 02, 2008, 12:41:21 PM »
I think it would be interesting to allow civilian ships to colonize other planets.  It would give some people the opportunity to create a human-centric campaign and see what would happen if a civilian colony decided to break away from the existing empire.  It could also be used to simulate citizens that do not want to be part of the empire in the first place, to get away from religious persecution, retain their culture, etc.

It would also make the political situation interesting if they did decide to set up a colony in a place that the government would consider unfortunate if other NPC races were present.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Bellerophon06 »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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« Reply #7 on: May 03, 2008, 07:36:06 AM »
Quote from: "Bellerophon06"
I think it would be interesting to allow civilian ships to colonize other planets.  It would give some people the opportunity to create a human-centric campaign and see what would happen if a civilian colony decided to break away from the existing empire.  It could also be used to simulate citizens that do not want to be part of the empire in the first place, to get away from religious persecution, retain their culture, etc.

It would also make the political situation interesting if they did decide to set up a colony in a place that the government would consider unfortunate if other NPC races were present.

That's a good point. I'll guess I could place a simple restriction that they couldn't colonise a planet where a population of another race was present but otherwise they cold colonise anywhere. For now though it won't make much difference because they can only colonise ideal worlds or worlds with enough infrastructure. The former will no doubt be colonised anyway and the latter will require government support. What I will need to add is civilian freighters and civilian infrastructure construction.

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline IanD

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« Reply #8 on: August 15, 2008, 02:59:30 AM »
Steve - The civ colony ships work as advertised, but the geo survey ships are not living up to expectations. What I mean by that is I designed two geo survey ships one with a jump engine and one without. So the civ space centre builds the one without jump engines and is therefore limited to systems with jump gates. Because all my systems with jump gates are fully surveyed it now spends its time going back and forth across a single gate. Can v3.2 choose to build the survey ship with jump engines should such a design be available?

Regards
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by IanD »
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Offline SteveAlt

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« Reply #9 on: August 17, 2008, 01:10:18 PM »
Quote from: "IanD"
Steve - The civ colony ships work as advertised, but the geo survey ships are not living up to expectations. What I mean by that is I designed two geo survey ships one with a jump engine and one without. So the civ space centre builds the one without jump engines and is therefore limited to systems with jump gates. Because all my systems with jump gates are fully surveyed it now spends its time going back and forth across a single gate. Can v3.2 choose to build the survey ship with jump engines should such a design be available?

That sounds like a sensible idea. From this and other posts it sounds like I need to revisit the non-colony civilian ships. As a starter, I will definitely add some SM way of deleting or transfering civilian ships.

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by SteveAlt »
 

Offline Brian Neumann

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« Reply #10 on: August 17, 2008, 04:44:29 PM »
How about a check box on the ship design screen.  If it is checked then it is an eligible design for civilian use.  Put in a routine that only makes this available if there are no military systems on the ship

Brian
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Brian »
 

Offline Erik L

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« Reply #11 on: August 17, 2008, 06:15:58 PM »
Quote from: "Brian"
How about a check box on the ship design screen.  If it is checked then it is an eligible design for civilian use.  Put in a routine that only makes this available if there are no military systems on the ship

Brian


Instead of this, possibly allow "civilian" ships to add obsolete tech. If current mil-spec is a 15cm 5 sec laser, then the 10 sec 12cm might be approved for civilian use.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Erik Luken »
 

Offline Erik L

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« Reply #12 on: August 25, 2008, 10:28:52 PM »
How does the AI determine where to drop off colonists for the civilian ships?

I've got Earth (2767.07m), Nueva Terra (21.7m), Framingham (17.5m), Somersville (14.88m), and Far Harbor (0m)

Earth is in Sol obviously, Nueva Terra, Framingham and Somersville are in Boston, and Far Harbor in Anchorage. Warp chain is:
Sol--Boston--Anchorage

The civs take from Earth and dump on NT. Then take from NT and drop on either Fram or Somer. They are completely ignoring FH. There are gates the entire chain, so there shouldn't be a reason I can see that they'd ignore the 0.0 Far Harbor for the .8 Somersville.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Erik Luken »
 

Offline ZimRathbone

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« Reply #13 on: August 26, 2008, 07:24:53 AM »
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
How does the AI determine where to drop off colonists for the civilian ships?

I've got Earth (2767.07m), Nueva Terra (21.7m), Framingham (17.5m), Somersville (14.88m), and Far Harbor (0m)

Earth is in Sol obviously, Nueva Terra, Framingham and Somersville are in Boston, and Far Harbor in Anchorage. Warp chain is:
Sol--Boston--Anchorage

The civs take from Earth and dump on NT. Then take from NT and drop on either Fram or Somer. They are completely ignoring FH. There are gates the entire chain, so there shouldn't be a reason I can see that they'd ignore the 0.0 Far Harbor for the .8 Somersville.


I believe that they dont pick up until youre 20m+ & they then chose the closest planet in jumps under 20m and then chose by habilitability.  I suspect that what you may be seing is the pickup of colonists in NT gives options of Fram & Somerville before Far Harbour.

Mike
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by ZimRathbone »
Slàinte,

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Offline SteveAlt

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« Reply #14 on: August 26, 2008, 09:15:28 AM »
Quote from: "Erik Luken"
How does the AI determine where to drop off colonists for the civilian ships?

I've got Earth (2767.07m), Nueva Terra (21.7m), Framingham (17.5m), Somersville (14.88m), and Far Harbor (0m)

Earth is in Sol obviously, Nueva Terra, Framingham and Somersville are in Boston, and Far Harbor in Anchorage. Warp chain is:
Sol--Boston--Anchorage

The civs take from Earth and dump on NT. Then take from NT and drop on either Fram or Somer. They are completely ignoring FH. There are gates the entire chain, so there shouldn't be a reason I can see that they'd ignore the 0.0 Far Harbor for the .8 Somersville.

The civilian ships pick up from any population over 20m and drop off at any population under 20m. They select the closest pop in terms of jumps.

I am considering letting the player specify which populations are able to supply colonists and which are able to receive colonists. This would allow more control over civilian colonization but my concern is that would remove too much of the "civilian" element and the colony ships would just go where the player told them. An in-between option might be to allow the player to specify the breakpoint (currently 20m) between colonists arriving and colonists leaving for his Empire as a whole.

Steve
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by SteveAlt »