v2.6.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Barkhorn]

With the Enhanced Precursors: if I add a ruin in Sol System per GM (or any other race starting system), is there also a chance for an Emergence?

maybe it would be a good idea to make Sol System an exception so that there can no Emergence in Sol System/starting system?

Manually created ruins don't generate precursors.

I don't know if this is still possible, but back in the VB6 days I had a ruin spawn on Mars, not through SM.  Can that happen now?  If it can, could that ruin spawn Precursors?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

With the Enhanced Precursors: if I add a ruin in Sol System per GM (or any other race starting system), is there also a chance for an Emergence?

maybe it would be a good idea to make Sol System an exception so that there can no Emergence in Sol System/starting system?

Manually created ruins don't generate precursors.

I don't know if this is still possible, but back in the VB6 days I had a ruin spawn on Mars, not through SM.  Can that happen now?  If it can, could that ruin spawn Precursors?

Ruins can still spawn in Sol but don't generate precursors either.

[Bremen]

The enhanced precursors and swarm are interesting. They'll definitely contribute to wanting to spread out your forces instead of keep your battlefleet in Sol, which I'm always in favor of. But it's really hard to picture how challenging they might be without a playtest, which I look forward to.

[Louella]

Just to clarify something, with the ground forces capability and training cost...

What happens with empires of multiple species ? Does it just use the local population species to check the criteria ?

Is having a colony where the workforce is housed in orbital stations, then the only way to have a training facility for "Extreme Gravity" ?

[LuuBluum]

Every time I see Steve make changes to anything ground forces-related, I get hopeful.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Just to clarify something, with the ground forces capability and training cost...

What happens with empires of multiple species ? Does it just use the local population species to check the criteria ?

Is having a colony where the workforce is housed in orbital stations, then the only way to have a training facility for "Extreme Gravity" ?

It uses population species. High gravity would need orbital stations. Low gravity will be fine for normal populations, assuming you can get sufficient population on to a small body.

[alex_brunius]

Hmmm, so what happen with the cost if the terrain of a planet changes due to eccentric orbits mid construction of a ground unit? 
Edit: Never mind it's determined at construction start... I just can't read

Well it still opens up interesting scenarios where you can train several different ground units with discount if you find the right planet orbit..

[smoelf]

Added a Non-Combat button to the Formation Templates tab of the Ground Forces window. This allows you to toggle the non-combat status of each Ground Unit Class.

That is such a wonderful small QOL change. I can't even count the amount of times I have forgotten to add the Non-Combat modifier and have had to rebuilt the unit and research again (usually through SM, but still..)

[Ghostly]

Added non-interrupt event for each ground unit unloaded.

Will this impact the Unload All Ground Units order in any way? Dropships currently have no advantage outside of opposed landings which are rarely the best choice since defeating the enemy STO is almost always more economical. If normal troop transports could only unload GUs in batches (with Front Line Defense units being unloaded first, I suppose) then a slowly disembarking force could suffer a few rounds of serious damage before it's fully assembled, and dropships would suddenly become a viable choice for establishing beachheads or even conducting entire invasions without their GUs ever fighting at a disadvantage.

[Ghostly]

Happy to finally see a new entry in the changelog, but I have to confess this is the first change that I personally don't agree with. Low gravity infrastructure always felt like an interesting logistical challenge, since it can't be mass-produced by civilians for free unless one already has a massive LG population (which is hard to accomplish for obvious reasons) and its mineral requirements make it harder to quickly establish a self-expanding colony and complicate mineral logistics in a way that I find enjoyable. Sourcing it is an actual problem even in the late-game, where normal infrastucture needs are quickly met either by civilian production or by leeching it from a nearby terraformed world that no longer needs it. This makes low gravity colonies require a lot more thought to establish than normal ones, but colonizing certain mineral-rich dwarf planets, moons and large asteroids is well worth the extra complexity. All in all, I think this change is a mistake, but it's your game, so you do you.

[skoormit]

Happy to finally see a new entry in the changelog, but I have to confess this is the first change that I personally don't agree with. Low gravity infrastructure always felt like an interesting logistical challenge, since it can't be mass-produced by civilians for free unless one already has a massive LG population (which is hard to accomplish for obvious reasons) and its mineral requirements make it harder to quickly establish a self-expanding colony and complicate mineral logistics in a way that I find enjoyable. Sourcing it is an actual problem even in the late-game, where normal infrastucture needs are quickly met either by civilian production or by leeching it from a nearby terraformed world that no longer needs it. This makes low gravity colonies require a lot more thought to establish than normal ones, but colonizing certain mineral-rich dwarf planets, moons and large asteroids is well worth the extra complexity. All in all, I think this change is a mistake, but it's your game, so you do you.

I concur with all of this, and will add that this change will make an even more pronounced difference when playing as a race with a higher minimum grav threshold than the default humans (0.1).

I recently started a run with a random race.
Their min grav is 0.23.
Turns out, there are a lot of bodies big enough for atmo but below 0.23g.
I have a LG colony on a body that can hold 1.5b pop.
I have many more in the 200m - 500m range.
Providing the LGI that these colonies need for optimal growth is proving to be quite a challenge, since I can't just get LGI for free as trade goods from the homeworld.
If these colonies merely needed regular infra at twice the usual density, a lot of interesting decisions would go away.

[lumporr]

I'd like to point out that LG infrastructure is identical to regular infrastructure except for that it costs twice as much (and has the added cost of boronide - thanks skoormit for pointing that out). I also believe it *can* be generated as a trade good from other LG colonies, if not the homeworld - so that 1.5b colony should in theory be a reliable source. The only thing the change does is make it so that regular colonies and low-grav colonies can share some infrastructure, with the stated caveat that the low-grav will need twice as much. Oh - I suppose also cargo requirements would change, needing twice as many shipments of regular infra than low grav infra. So, in terms of colonial deliveries, this is actually an *increase* in cost, if you factor in fuel requirements, for the tradeoff of allowing universal use of regular infrastructure.

It is interesting, I'd say, that gravity is reduced to a binary threshold, rather than a gradual increase in infrastructural requirements. IMO, it'd make more sense to me for gravity to be a factor like hydrosphere or temperature requirements, which scale with the difference in ideal vs. actual values. It's a little weird when there can be a colony with perfect 1.0g and a colony with 1.6g or 0.2g without any mechanical difference between the three.

In terms of gameplay decision - shipping low-grav infrastructure to a colony that requires it isn't a decision. But having to weigh the increased infrastructure cost with all of the *other* competing colonies *is* a decision.

[Bremen]

I like it for the simplicity and making things easier for civilian freighters, myself.

[skoormit]

I'd like to point out that LG infrastructure is identical to regular infrastructure except for that it costs twice as much. I also believe it *can* be generated as a trade good from other LG colonies, if not the homeworld - so that 1.5b colony should in theory be a reliable source. The only thing the change does is make it so that regular colonies and low-grav colonies can share some infrastructure, with the stated caveat that the low-grav will need twice as much. Oh - I suppose also cargo requirements would change, needing twice as many shipments of regular infra than low grav infra. So, in terms of colonial deliveries, this is actually an *increase* in cost, if you factor in fuel requirements, for the tradeoff of allowing universal use of regular infrastructure.

It is interesting, I'd say, that gravity is reduced to a binary threshold, rather than a gradual increase in infrastructural requirements. IMO, it'd make more sense to me for gravity to be a factor like hydrosphere or temperature requirements, which scale with the difference in ideal vs. actual gravity on a colony. It's a little weird when there can be a colony with perfect 1.0g and a colony with 1.6g or 0.2g without any mechanical difference between the three.

In terms of gameplay decision - shipping low-grav infrastructure to a colony that requires it isn't a decision. But having to weigh the increased infrastructure cost with all of the *other* competing colonies *is* a decision.

Yes, LG infra can be generated as a trade good, just like regular infra.
You need a very large colony to generate either type in large numbers.

You start off with a very large colony with regular infra.
Hence you can get very large amounts of regular infra for free, right from the start of the game.

You do not start off with a very large LG colony.
You have to grow one yourself, using LGI that you make yourself (or wait a couple centuries for enough free LGI to be provided by the growing colony).

That makes LGI different from regular infra in a far more interesting way than the fact that it costs twice as much and requires Boronide.

[nuclearslurpee]

Happy to finally see a new entry in the changelog, but I have to confess this is the first change that I personally don't agree with. Low gravity infrastructure always felt like an interesting logistical challenge, since it can't be mass-produced by civilians for free unless one already has a massive LG population (which is hard to accomplish for obvious reasons) and its mineral requirements make it harder to quickly establish a self-expanding colony and complicate mineral logistics in a way that I find enjoyable. Sourcing it is an actual problem even in the late-game, where normal infrastucture needs are quickly met either by civilian production or by leeching it from a nearby terraformed world that no longer needs it. This makes low gravity colonies require a lot more thought to establish than normal ones, but colonizing certain mineral-rich dwarf planets, moons and large asteroids is well worth the extra complexity. All in all, I think this change is a mistake, but it's your game, so you do you.

I concur with all of this, and will add that this change will make an even more pronounced difference when playing as a race with a higher minimum grav threshold than the default humans (0.1).

I recently started a run with a random race.
Their min grav is 0.23.
Turns out, there are a lot of bodies big enough for atmo but below 0.23g.
I have a LG colony on a body that can hold 1.5b pop.
I have many more in the 200m - 500m range.
Providing the LGI that these colonies need for optimal growth is proving to be quite a challenge, since I can't just get LGI for free as trade goods from the homeworld.
If these colonies merely needed regular infra at twice the usual density, a lot of interesting decisions would go away.

In terms of gameplay decision - shipping low-grav infrastructure to a colony that requires it isn't a decision. But having to weigh the increased infrastructure cost with all of the *other* competing colonies *is* a decision.

I tend to agree here. I like to play with a reduced gravity tolerance, 0.3--1.7 (just enough to allow full colonization of Mars with CC=0.0). In these games, LG infrastructure becomes a lot more interesting because you can more easily find ways to reuse it, whereas under the default settings LGI is kind of useless once you have enough non-manual mines to make populating asteroids rather needless.

That being said, it's really a minor change which does simplify some micromanagement a little bit, so I'm not strictly opposed either. That said:

It is interesting, I'd say, that gravity is reduced to a binary threshold, rather than a gradual increase in infrastructural requirements. IMO, it'd make more sense to me for gravity to be a factor like hydrosphere or temperature requirements, which scale with the difference in ideal vs. actual gravity on a colony. It's a little weird when there can be a colony with perfect 1.0g and a colony with 1.6g or 0.2g without any mechanical difference between the three.

This is interesting and I think a great opportunity with the posted change. Consider having a gravitational tolerance window which is smaller than currently but contributes to colony cost on a sliding scale rather than a binary scale.

For example, suppose humans are given a default gravitational tolerance of ­­±0.30. Then let

• Within ±1 tolerance width implies CC=0.0 from gravitational effects. So bodies in a range from 0.70--1.30 have no difficulty due to gravity.
• Outside this window, scale linearly with multiples of tolerance away from the window.
• For example, a planet with G=0.4 or G=1.6 has CC=1.0 from gravity.
• A planet with G=0.1 or G=1.9 has CC=2.0 from gravity.

And so on. This would make infrastructure more necessary as terraforming alone will create fewer ideal worlds (e.g., not Mars) and make species gravity more interesting, since different species might have different ideal world types and be more willing to share space (bonus if the AI can be taught to share systems with other races, especially if the different races colonize different bodies).