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Posted by: Paul M
« on: April 21, 2009, 04:50:05 AM »

My point is pretty much for multiplayer, in this case the first person to find a ruin can get such a boost from it that it is difficult to balance for the SM beyond basically removing the ruins or adding them into the game for the other players.  While both are doable work arounds reducing the ruins effectiveness would allow them to show up, and I like the rest of you think they do add interest and are a good idea; but without making them balance destroying.

Not that there is any chance of true balance given the existance of survey luck but this is the case of survey luck squared.  

50-100 pts towards the appropriate technology (2-5 pts per infrastructure) and the ability to unlock advanced technology seems good enough to me without directly giving technology or items to the player.
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: April 18, 2009, 09:14:00 AM »

Here's an interesting twist that I don't know what to do about.  I recently captured two Precursor sensor bases by ground assault.  Their strength instantly dropped to be that of my sensor bases.  This is the flip side of the auto-upgrade feature for the econony etc - when efficiency techs are researched, you put your factories, sensor bases, etc under your pillow and when you wake up in the morning, voila - the upgrade fairy has come along and made them all more efficient.  (Coded up as a single efficiency in the DB.)  What hadn't occurred to me is that the same thing happens when you reactivate/capture opposing tech - it's magically transformed to your efficiency level.

The reason I don't know what to do about it is that the obvious solution, to have each installation know its efficiency is yuckky in three ways:

1)  A lot of disgusting micro-management (and cost) to upgrade the entire industrial base when efficiency increases.

2)  A lot of disgusting coding that Steve would have to do to track individual efficiencies.

3)  (I suspect) a major bloat in the size of the DB for the added information.

Now that I think of it, the memory bloat probably wouldn't be that bad, since it could be coded up as "8 factories of TL 4, 6 of TL 5, ...".  The major nastiness is figuring out upgrade mechanisms that don't entail micro-management.

OTOH, it would have been really cool to have those sensor bases able to see 10x as far as mine do (judging from where they were picking my ships up) and to haul them home for dissection in an attempt to up my TL.

John
Posted by: ShadoCat
« on: April 18, 2009, 01:46:47 AM »

Quote from: "Andrew"
I like ruins the way they are now. They add interest to a campaign.

Ditto.

Though I'd be OK with the tech variant as well.
Posted by: Sotak246
« on: April 17, 2009, 06:42:10 PM »

I too am in the ruins are ok as is camp.  Part of the enjoyment of the game is wondering what the teams will find.  I use the idea that the time it takes the team to "find" an installation is actually the time it took to change it over to player use.  That being said, if you do change it Erik's idea works the best for me.  
Quote
Ruins grant minerals, missiles and infrastructure as currently, but for all other results increase the RP of a random, non-known tech by a small amount (100-500 points). This would only be tech that is on the player's research list, i.e. no Advanced 15cm lasers (unless they've uncovered said tech).
Posted by: Father Tim
« on: April 17, 2009, 04:27:31 PM »

John's point 3 leads me to think of terraforming as including bioforming.  For that matter, including the creation of a hydrosphere if necessary, too.  Grab a pile of ice chunks from a handy planetary rigs, and crash them into your target planet to 'build' a hydrosphere.

Part of the process of getting runaway greenhouse gases under control and upping the oxygen content of your newly 22C world is seeding it with a few hundred million square kilometres of rainforest.
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: April 17, 2009, 01:58:04 PM »

Quote from: "Kurt"
Quote from: "Andrew"
I like ruins the way they are now. They add interest to a campaign.
I find it quite credible that facilities of one race caould be converted for use of another so I have no problem with recovering ruined facilities. There are certainly things I think are more implausible in the game if you have problems beleiving in things , Constant velocity ships, Easy to settle alien worlds (no incompatible biochemistries), multiple races within a very short time span of each other technologically. etc all of which are necessary .
As multiplayer games are going to be very difficult to run anyway I don't worry about them at all and if you want to keep them balanced that is what an SM is for

I agree with your statement about the ruins.  Of the other things you said above, the one I've been pondering is the fact that currently Aurora completely ignores the planetary biosphere.  We can modify atmospheric content, and temperature is modeled as is gravity, but the presence or absence of a biosphere is completely ignored.  This has vaguely bothered me for a while, and I've been pondering a way to include it that would fit in with the current rules and format.  Does anyone have an idea?  Should biospheres be included and how?  

As far as I can see, they could be included just like H2O is currently included, present or not, and they could be required to count a planet as terraformed.  Perhaps if there is no biosphere the planet would be colony cost 2.0, just as if it had no oxygen.  Which reminds me, shouldn't a planet be colony cost 2.0 if it has no water?

An alternative would be to have different types of biospheres.  Class A, B, and C, and so on.  Earth might have a Class B biosphere, other planets might have different biospheres.  The farther the planet's biosphere is from your home planet's, the higher the colony cost.  

What does everyone think?  Unnecessary complication, or reasonable complication to remedy an oversight?

Kurt

I'm in the "ruins are ok as is" camp as well.

On the biosphere stuff, from a conceptual level I agree.  From a practical level:

1)  Habitable worlds are hard enough to find.  I'd hate to put in another constraint that knocks their likelihood down by another order of magnitude

2)  Trying to come up with an "invasive species" set of rules could easily become a nightmare.  To put it another way, what would a set of "bio-forming" rules look like?

3)  Any biosphere which exists could be assumed to be tuned to the planet's environmental parameters.  So how do you model what happens when the temperature drops 30 degrees and the O2 content of the atmosphere triples due to terraforming efforts.  And how do you model the environmentalists' screams of Gaiaicide?

So, reluctantly, I think I'm in the "too complex" camp on this one.

John
Posted by: Cassaralla
« on: April 17, 2009, 01:55:45 PM »

Quote from: "Erik Luken"
Actually, I meant the available tech. Available research projects. So if you got 15cm to research, it won't apply any to 20cm. This would be done by the Xeno teams. The Cyber teams would still be able to get the Advanced variants.


So how about the cyber teams opening up the 'Advanced' projects for research rather than granting them outright?
Posted by: Kurt
« on: April 17, 2009, 12:49:23 PM »

Quote from: "Andrew"
I like ruins the way they are now. They add interest to a campaign.
I find it quite credible that facilities of one race caould be converted for use of another so I have no problem with recovering ruined facilities. There are certainly things I think are more implausible in the game if you have problems beleiving in things , Constant velocity ships, Easy to settle alien worlds (no incompatible biochemistries), multiple races within a very short time span of each other technologically. etc all of which are necessary .
As multiplayer games are going to be very difficult to run anyway I don't worry about them at all and if you want to keep them balanced that is what an SM is for

I agree with your statement about the ruins.  Of the other things you said above, the one I've been pondering is the fact that currently Aurora completely ignores the planetary biosphere.  We can modify atmospheric content, and temperature is modeled as is gravity, but the presence or absence of a biosphere is completely ignored.  This has vaguely bothered me for a while, and I've been pondering a way to include it that would fit in with the current rules and format.  Does anyone have an idea?  Should biospheres be included and how?  

As far as I can see, they could be included just like H2O is currently included, present or not, and they could be required to count a planet as terraformed.  Perhaps if there is no biosphere the planet would be colony cost 2.0, just as if it had no oxygen.  Which reminds me, shouldn't a planet be colony cost 2.0 if it has no water?

An alternative would be to have different types of biospheres.  Class A, B, and C, and so on.  Earth might have a Class B biosphere, other planets might have different biospheres.  The farther the planet's biosphere is from your home planet's, the higher the colony cost.  

What does everyone think?  Unnecessary complication, or reasonable complication to remedy an oversight?

Kurt
Posted by: Andrew
« on: April 17, 2009, 04:24:33 AM »

I like ruins the way they are now. They add interest to a campaign.
I find it quite credible that facilities of one race caould be converted for use of another so I have no problem with recovering ruined facilities. There are certainly things I think are more implausible in the game if you have problems beleiving in things , Constant velocity ships, Easy to settle alien worlds (no incompatible biochemistries), multiple races within a very short time span of each other technologically. etc all of which are necessary .
As multiplayer games are going to be very difficult to run anyway I don't worry about them at all and if you want to keep them balanced that is what an SM is for
Posted by: Paul M
« on: April 17, 2009, 03:03:00 AM »

Infrastructure: points towards colony colonization cost
Facilities: points towards the appropriate racial tech
alien weapon: points towards your current appropriate weapon tech(s)
advanced alien weapon: unlock tree
very small chance of getting a technological advance (or none at all since the combined effects of the above should negate the need for this).

My reason is purely from the point of view of multiplayer where I would rather not have ruins be so overwhelming.
Posted by: Erik L
« on: April 16, 2009, 08:06:01 PM »

Actually, I meant the available tech. Available research projects. So if you got 15cm to research, it won't apply any to 20cm. This would be done by the Xeno teams. The Cyber teams would still be able to get the Advanced variants.
Posted by: Father Tim
« on: April 16, 2009, 07:36:02 PM »

I believe Erik was referring to the Research Queue, and not the complete list of tech.  That is, have Aurora pick a tech that the player has expressed interest in aquiring, not pik something completely at random.

Personally, I would prefer limiting it to 'racial ability' techs (construction rate, mining rate, research rate, fuel production, maint production, etc.)
Posted by: Cassaralla
« on: April 16, 2009, 07:21:41 PM »

I thought ruins were the only way currently that you could discover the Advanced Lasers, rail guns etc?
Posted by: Erik L
« on: April 16, 2009, 06:14:16 PM »

Quote from: "SteveAlt"
Quote from: "Paul M"
This is more based on reading the fiction so it may be silly.

To me recovering working alien technology seems a bit absurd, and more to the point I can't see it would do you much good in the long run since maintaining an alien system would be the closest thing to impossible there is.  So rather than that why not have them give research points to the next level of the appropriate technology.  So recovery of ancient construction devices adds to your next level of construction rate technology, an alien research station adds to your next level of research rate, alien infrastructure to the cost of new colonies and so on.

So ruins would yield minerals, direct technology, and points towards racial technology and say from weapons and such points towards specific weapon technologies.

Just my feeling on the matter anyway.
I agree that in reality recovering abandoned factories that we could operate is pretty unlikely :). Infrastructure is probably more realistic as we could probably adapt alien structures to house humans. You can already get minerals and technology from ruins. The ruins are really more about fun and gameplay than reality though. Its fun to see what you turn up. The whole Trans-Newtonian concept that makes the game playable in the first place is just as contrived. That said, I am happy to change the general direction of ruins if there is a general consensus.

Steve

How about this.

Ruins grant minerals, missiles and infrastructure as currently, but for all other results increase the RP of a random, non-known tech by a small amount (100-500 points). This would only be tech that is on the player's research list, i.e. no Advanced 15cm lasers (unless they've uncovered said tech).
Posted by: schroeam
« on: April 16, 2009, 04:05:55 PM »

What if another facility is designed to be built on a planet that a shipyard is towed to, but is automatically build if a new shipyard is constructed.  Some sort of Shipyard support facilities that would be about the same size as a CF.  You could ship them from the originating planet, or build them new, but having more of them than shipyards has zero effect on the performance of the yards.  Having it as a separate facility that is constructed at the same time as the shipyard only becomes a problem if a shipyard is moved to another planet.  Really it is just an anchor for the shipyard.  Maybe?  Just a thought.

Adam.