Author Topic: v2.0.0 Changes Discussion Thread  (Read 122711 times)

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Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #330 on: September 18, 2021, 04:01:25 PM »
An extremely bold statement of yours. I'd rate it as "impossible" rather than "almost possible" precisely because of the explanation you gave below. The amount of water vapour present is so low that any terraformation force capable of terraforming before you're done with that save will remove this tiny amounf of vapour very fast, meaning you end up with constant spam of terraforming being "finished" despite lack of any significant progress.

By "almost possible" I mean it would be possible if not for this one thing, which makes it impossible at present. It is a different term for the same thing.  ;)

Quote
Also the simple option to modify desired hydrosphere level directly has a benefit of you being able to say "I want 50% water" just like right now you can say "I want 0.21 atm oxygen" and be done with it. Even if what you are talking about would work in practice you'd still have to check manually whether you didn't remove too much.

This would also work and probably be more intuitive, it should not be too hard for Steve to make the terraforming GUI switch from atm to %hydro for water vapor only, such context-aware switching happens in many other GUIs and even when SM mode is active.
 
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Offline Bremen

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #331 on: September 18, 2021, 04:38:33 PM »
I know I argued for a simpler mechanic, but the hydrosphere lagging in both directions is cool. A bit worried about log spam from repeated albedo changes between liquid and solid water, though.

As I understand it, the current change is only for liquid vs gas, which doesn't change albedo AFAIK (though I guess technically it should, clouds are white). I had the same worry.
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #332 on: September 19, 2021, 04:07:25 AM »
With the new changes to hydrosphere... Would it be possible to get a terraforming option for directly adding/removing water instead of bothering with water vapour? I mean, besides it being better micro wise, while for adding water nothing changes, in case of removing water now I'm kinda screwed. Previously to avoid tedium I'd raise temperature above 100 degress, remove some of the vapour and then cool the planet down again. Now with the new changes this is no longer viable because it takes time for water to evaporate, meaning I can't just directly set water level to what I want in one go.

Adding water vapour and waiting for it to condense was done by design to make terraforming planets without water more of a challenge. The same is true for ocean worlds where you need to remove water.

Heating the planet, adding/removing water vapour and then lowering the temperature to condense all the water at once was an exploit. The 'instant condense/evaporate' when changing between liquid and vapour was intended as a quick fix for situations where that boundary is passed only once during terraforming. Now that eccentric orbits have been added and the boundary may be crossed many times, an update to the water cycle was needed, which had the secondary effect of closing that loophole.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2021, 04:25:04 AM by Steve Walmsley »
 

Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #333 on: September 19, 2021, 04:16:06 AM »
Steve, can you post an updated terrain chart like in this post? Maybe update the one in there as well to avoid confusion.

See below. The weird 9999 numbers are due to the way the DB sometimes displays floating point numbers, but they are fine on load.

 
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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #334 on: September 19, 2021, 04:17:34 AM »
I know I argued for a simpler mechanic, but the hydrosphere lagging in both directions is cool. A bit worried about log spam from repeated albedo changes between liquid and solid water, though.

As I understand it, the current change is only for liquid vs gas, which doesn't change albedo AFAIK (though I guess technically it should, clouds are white). I had the same worry.

Yes, that is correct. No albedo change for liquid to vapour.
 

Offline Vasious

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #335 on: September 19, 2021, 05:46:47 AM »
Will be interesting to see if and how the orbits and environmental considerations will have an effect on Bioengineering/Genome Sequencing  if it reappears
 

Offline Stormtrooper

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #336 on: September 19, 2021, 05:49:22 AM »
With the new changes to hydrosphere... Would it be possible to get a terraforming option for directly adding/removing water instead of bothering with water vapour? I mean, besides it being better micro wise, while for adding water nothing changes, in case of removing water now I'm kinda screwed. Previously to avoid tedium I'd raise temperature above 100 degress, remove some of the vapour and then cool the planet down again. Now with the new changes this is no longer viable because it takes time for water to evaporate, meaning I can't just directly set water level to what I want in one go.

Adding water vapour and waiting for it to condense was done by design to make terraforming planets without water more of a challenge. The same is true for ocean worlds where you need to remove water.

Heating the planet, adding/removing water vapour and then lowering the temperature to condense all the water at once was an exploit. The 'instant condense/evaporate' when changing between liquid and vapour was intended as a quick fix for situations where that boundary is passed only once during terraforming. Now that eccentric orbits have been added and the boundary may be crossed many times, an update to the water cycle was needed, which had the secondary effect of closing that loophole.

Well, I hardly see this mechanic as a "challenge" and my solution as an "exploit". IMO much more fitting terms would be "tedious micro" and a "solution to reduce micro". All I want to say here is that it hardly matters, all in all in both cases you have to spend some in-game time to get water to what you want, except:

-you can't "fire and forget" like with other gasses you set once because you know you want 21% oxygen and 1 atm total for a second earth world, you need to constantly watch whether enough water has condensed already and you need to stop adding vapour or not

-in case of removing water, good luck terraforming an ocean world if every few in-game days the game pauses to tell you that "all water vapour has been removed" but very little water disappeared from the planet. Like, you'd be able to run maybe 30 days max without an interrupt and having to give terraforming order once again, repeating it possibly for bazillion times until all the excess water is gone. That was my experience that led me to inventing the heating "exploit"

Thankfully the "exploit" is still possible, just means I'llhave to additionally wait after heating the planet above 100 degrees while constantly checking whether I can start removing vapour, but Steve, please, please consider making hydrosphere adjustment straightforward for the sake of smoother gameplay, make it as slow as you wish, even slower in-game time-wise than it is now to keep whatever challenge you want, but please... 🙏
 
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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #337 on: September 19, 2021, 05:57:17 AM »
Will be interesting to see if and how the orbits and environmental considerations will have an effect on Bioengineering/Genome Sequencing  if it reappears

Yes, I have been thinking about that. In the past, creating a new species wasn't that important because you could terraform your way out of most situations, with the exceptions of high gravity and where you maxed out on greenhouse or anti-greenhouse. Now there is a scenario where it can be impossible to create an ideal world due to the temperate range exceeding that of your primary species. Creating a species with a wider temperature range looks very attractive in that situation. I suspect I will have added that functionality before v2.0 is released.
 
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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #338 on: September 19, 2021, 06:03:23 AM »
With the new changes to hydrosphere... Would it be possible to get a terraforming option for directly adding/removing water instead of bothering with water vapour? I mean, besides it being better micro wise, while for adding water nothing changes, in case of removing water now I'm kinda screwed. Previously to avoid tedium I'd raise temperature above 100 degress, remove some of the vapour and then cool the planet down again. Now with the new changes this is no longer viable because it takes time for water to evaporate, meaning I can't just directly set water level to what I want in one go.

Adding water vapour and waiting for it to condense was done by design to make terraforming planets without water more of a challenge. The same is true for ocean worlds where you need to remove water.

Heating the planet, adding/removing water vapour and then lowering the temperature to condense all the water at once was an exploit. The 'instant condense/evaporate' when changing between liquid and vapour was intended as a quick fix for situations where that boundary is passed only once during terraforming. Now that eccentric orbits have been added and the boundary may be crossed many times, an update to the water cycle was needed, which had the secondary effect of closing that loophole.

Well, I hardly see this mechanic as a "challenge" and my solution as an "exploit". IMO much more fitting terms would be "tedious micro" and a "solution to reduce micro".

I stopped reading after the first two sentences. Perhaps you should work on your approach to convincing people to listen to you.
 

Offline nuclearslurpee

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #339 on: September 19, 2021, 08:35:15 AM »
words

words

I'll admit that stormtrooper come off a bit acerbic, but he is raising a good point that others have mentioned which is that trying to remove hydrosphere with the existing terraforming mechanic is not a fun experience for most players. This is because the atmospheric water vapor especially at higher tech levels is easily removed within a single increment leading to stop-start and notification spam, since the transformation of hydrosphere to new vapor happens after the terraformers check if their job is done. With adding water the same problem actually exists but can be avoided by setting a high atm value for the vapor so it usually doesn't come up.

In addition to the suggested changes above, as another possibility I wonder if allowing players to set the desired atm to -1 would be an acceptable flag to say "remove the selected gas until new orders are given" which also avoids these problems though it is something of a band-aid fix.

Basically, anything to allow removal of water vapor and hydrosphere without the start-stop and notification spam would be much appreciated by many.  :)
 
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Offline Steve Walmsley (OP)

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #340 on: September 19, 2021, 08:49:02 AM »
Basically, anything to allow removal of water vapor and hydrosphere without the start-stop and notification spam would be much appreciated by many.  :)

Yes, I can understand that frustration. I haven't had to remove water in any of my games or that would have been sorted by now :)

For v2.0, if you are removing water vapour, the process will no longer terminated due to a lack of water vapour in the atmosphere, unless the hydro extent is zero.

Offline Destragon

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #341 on: September 19, 2021, 10:33:51 AM »
This is probably not the right place to ask about it, but Steve, do you still plan to eventually in the future have some sort of rudimentary planetary map for placement and movement of ground armies?
 

Offline Droll

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #342 on: September 19, 2021, 11:42:54 AM »
Basically, anything to allow removal of water vapor and hydrosphere without the start-stop and notification spam would be much appreciated by many.  :)

Yes, I can understand that frustration. I haven't had to remove water in any of my games or that would have been sorted by now :)

For v2.0, if you are removing water vapour, the process will no longer terminated due to a lack of water vapour in the atmosphere, unless the hydro extent is zero.

and there was much rejoicing!
 

Offline Culise

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #343 on: September 23, 2021, 01:28:39 PM »
Basically, anything to allow removal of water vapor and hydrosphere without the start-stop and notification spam would be much appreciated by many.  :)

Yes, I can understand that frustration. I haven't had to remove water in any of my games or that would have been sorted by now :)

For v2.0, if you are removing water vapour, the process will no longer terminated due to a lack of water vapour in the atmosphere, unless the hydro extent is zero.
I hate to be a bother by asking on top of this, but is it possible to add other breakpoints at carrying capacity change boundaries?  Specifically, if/when I end up with a water world, it would still be convenient to be warned once I reduce the hydrosphere to 75% to maximize the population cap. 
 
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Offline Fistandantillus7

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Re: v1.14.0 Changes Discussion Thread
« Reply #344 on: September 26, 2021, 06:24:10 PM »
reading the new eccentric orbits, wondering that in a binary star system, would planets on those stars consider solar influx, and hence surface temperature and colony cost, from both stars?

No, they only consider the primary. I have the necessary code to account for all stars in the system, but decided it was too difficult for players to effectively consider those factors. Even with eccentric orbits, there is a pattern that it easy to understand. With one or more additional stars involved, each orbit could be different.

On basically my second game ever so I still do not know much about Aurora's mechanics. The following my not be a factor in Aurora's system generation mechanics.

That said, IIRC a rule of thumb (i.e. an over-generalization) is that planetary orbits are only stable (long term) if they are 1/10 (or less) or 10x (or more) the stellar separation in a multi-star systems. Thus solar systems can only exist where the stars are very close: a 5 million km star separation allows (P-type) planetary orbits beyond 50 million km to be stable; or the stars are very far apart: a 50 billion km star separation allows (S-type) planetary orbits less than 5 billion km from either star to be stable. Put a star where Jupiter is, and Mercury and Sedna are the only other stable bodies.

In widely separated multi-star systems the heating effects of one star on the planets orbiting the other are minimal in many (most?) cases. In a situation where the planets orbit a central binary however the combined radiation of both stars would dominate.

I did an internet search to make sure I did not imagine that factoid, and the 10% number for S-type orbits seems to be about right; stellar and planetary mass and orbital eccentricity affect the specific number obviously. My eyes glassed over when it came to the 10x for P-Type orbits though, the peer reviewed astronomy journal articles were just too much for my old(ish) brain. The basic story is correct though S-type (satellite/moon like around a single star) are stable close in and unstable further out, P-type (planet orbiting a central binary) are unstable close in and stable further out.

If Aurora generates P-type star systems, the combined heating effects of all the central stars should be factored in.
 
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