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[klingon13524]

According to a quick excel approximation i just ran, if your population has an average lifespan of 80 years and 6 kids per couple, you need almost 30 years to double your population. With 5 kids you need almost 40 years, and with 4 kids you need almost 60 years.

Considering the fact that one year in-game is 12 hours in reality, you'd still have to wait a freakin long time if you started with hundreds or thousands, and wanted to become an actual civilisation and not just a little town ^^.

Heck, even if you were a race where couples had one kid every year, with the offspring able to have his own children next year, and no mortality whatsoever, if you started with a thousand colonists, you'd still need 40 years (20 days of continuous playing) to populate a planet at earth's level (~7 billion people).

But yea, maybe hundreds are still ok as far as genetic diversity is concerned.

Well what about fetuses? Why not bring colonists of all ages (under 60!) to further accelerate the process?

[klingon13524]

Do they have robot slaves? Artificial intelligence? Appliances? Deploy-able factories? What kind of government will they form?

[Starver]

Do they have robot slaves? Artificial intelligence? Appliances? Deploy-able factories? What kind of government will they form?

Personally, I'd leave that open.  Beyond what basic resources are in-game required to initiate the propagation of the initial ship, that's what the targetted initial salvage of materials and a rummage through surprisingly comprehensive but utterly incomprehensible (at least initially) library computer will reveal...

Search for robotic tech, and you have basic, dumb, humaniform robots replacing the need to defrost some of the sleeping population who would otherwise be giving you the ability to labour.  Search, on the other hand, for AI-stuff and you get a handle on how the ship's control systems can be rebooted from the it-crashed-us-on-this-godawful-planet state and actually be of some use, and the thinkers among the population can be left to slumber until you're more ready for renaissance, rather than mere survivial.  Search for labour-saving devices and some necessary tools are now available to you, leaving the craftsmen for when you're not just needing to boot-strap your survival and if it's heavy it gets used as a hammer.  Search for mass-production and you get large-scale production with absolute minimal oversight.

And the woken starship crew are flight-trained, but beyond the captain-down hierarchy (on a vessel which is arguably never going to be space-worthy again, and so the usefulness of the captain, awoken too late to be involved in the landing anyway, is going to be challenged by union men among the ranks, pursers with a pretentiousness towards nobilty, various barrack-room lawyers and the chief of security, so a decision has to be made as to who is now in charge (perhaps looking up fragmented historical records part-depicting situations relating to the various "...cracies" involved) which also adds variety as to the future tendencies of the colony (can you essentially force labour out of people, or are they crying out for machines; is productivity threatened by petty-jobsworths or will they all tend to accept and carry out whatever orders they're told from whatever higher-rank exists; etc...), and so it goes on.  Each direction gives opportunities and challenges.

Whether that motion is entirely "player is fortress"-like, and the imaginary narrative is along the lines of "having sat down to discuss the issues, the various factions decided that, for the moment, they were going to appoint Artisan Michael from the mechanics section as titular head during the initial construction phase, and try to extrapolate the workings of the ship computer to further aid them in their browsing of further library items", or it's a matter of the player being "Captain" and "President for life[1]" whose words were listened to (maybe not always headed) for crucial decisions...

There's a whole lot of plot possible.

[1] And beyond, if you're given (or have been given?) special medical treatment for longevity, and even set to sleep periodically so that you're EmperorPresident for whatever millions of subsequent years of history your civilisation survives for.

[Sirian]

Starver > The ship has actually travelled during 1 million years, there is a reason why it's here, but the ship's crew won't know about it at first (and neither will you). However, the ship's database will be blank because the travel outlasted the life expectancy of the hard drives. That's the best excuse i could come up with to explain why you have to start basic research projects like "how to make steel" and "let's try to reinvent the solar panels". Granted, those will be quick researchs, but i felt like it was good to put it in, to give a sense of progression.

Your idea of an "RGB" tech cloud is interesting, but i don't think i'll be using that, because i tend to dislike such limitations in games.

klingon 13524> Some of that will be in the tech tree, under some form, yes. Concerning the governments, it won't be as deep as what Starver suggests, but you'll be given the possibility to form one once you have enough population, which will typically require you to either find or terraform a planet with breathable atmosphere, liquid water and reasonable temperatures. However, most of "what's beyond the 3rd tech level" is subject to change, and more vaguely defined, as i've been mostly focusing my efforts on the first(s) tech level(s) for now.
--
Also i wanted to clarify that at first (a couple years ago), my idea was to make a (multiplayer) browser game, so there may be remains of that in the way things are designed (like for instance the scenario with thousands of colony ships launched from earth).

[Servant Corps]

Millions shipped to a single planet? Make it more like hundreds or thousands of cryopods.

Also, i tend to think that only hundreds of colonists means a severe rate of inbreeding, and we don't want that.

Supposedly, someone ran the numbers and decided 200-300 would close to the minimum you'd want to take with you if genetic diversity was your only concern. Of course, frozen material and careful genetic screening would be prudent in case of undetected undesirable trait.

You could be taking about a post made by chaoticjosh in this incredibly horrible thread about space travel, but mainiac refuted it (and nobody responded back so I'm assuming mainiac is right).

[Starver]

Starver > The ship has actually travelled during 1 million years, there is a reason why it's here, but the ship's crew won't know about it at first (and neither will you).

Sounds good enough to me.  There's a million and one answers to the question, and I'm pretty sure you'd rather have your own version anyway (hence why I try to give archetypes, and not providing all the little details that could put you off using that precise answer).

HDD failure and sounds good.  Makes me think of other things, but I'm sure you've got all that covered as well without me speculating and trampling all over you!

While you'd be welcome to take the "RGB tech cloud" idea (nice summary, BTW), even while I was writing it I was sure you'd have your own approach.  As for limitations, I just wanted to avoid the "Well, now my scientists can only research 'FutureTech14'" thing from Civilization, et al.

(The game concept I developed it for I had realised was dangerously like Dwarf Fortress IN SPACE!, in many respects.  Well, in most of the "environment development" ones, anyway, so I was quite keen to make certain differentiations, like the tech-tree approach.  Since then, the idea has morphed even further away (although the keen amongst you could probably see influences)... but there's plenty of time for it to completely change before it ever sees the light of day. )

[The Merchant Of Menace]

This looks worth following.

[thobal]

Millions shipped to a single planet? Make it more like hundreds or thousands of cryopods.

Also, i tend to think that only hundreds of colonists means a severe rate of inbreeding, and we don't want that.

Supposedly, someone ran the numbers and decided 200-300 would close to the minimum you'd want to take with you if genetic diversity was your only concern. Of course, frozen material and careful genetic screening would be prudent in case of undetected undesirable trait.

You could be taking about a post made by chaoticjosh in this incredibly horrible thread about space travel, but mainiac refuted it (and nobody responded back so I'm assuming mainiac is right).

Actually, I was refering to this article in NewScientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1936

[Aklyon]

We seem to get all the interesting alphas lately.

[Reelyanoob]

@Sirian: why not use the program in my .sig to create original planet graphics for your game? I can customize it by request if needed.

[Sirian]

@Sirian: why not use the program in my .sig to create original planet graphics for your game? I can customize it by request if needed.

Thanks, but i'm already using another program, a plugin for photoshop called Lunarcell. It gives really good results, for instance this frozen planet and this life-supporting one

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Those are only old test pictures, and since i'll be using the demo version, i'll only have 2 weeks to draw all my planets, so i'm saving that for later (also i'll need to re-install photoshop).

In other news i'm finished with the production-updating scripts, i've drawn some ressource icons and right now i'm looking into building materials. Stuff like concrete, wire, pipes, etc...

For instance, 100 liters of concrete are made from 97kg of silica, 28kg of carbonate, 17 liters of water, and 104kg of gravel (but gravel will be abstracted as a hidden byproduct of mining activity, and hence you won't be really required to provide it). Silica will be mined and can be refined into Silicon, in the same way that Carbonate will be extracted and refined into Carbon.

The above is provided as a sample of what you can expect in terms of ressource production, i hope you won't find it overwhelming. Most of the time i try to research real life values for things like that, although some simplification will occur along the way.

Anyways, just letting you know that things are progressing smoothly.

[Sirian]

So, the project didnt advance much during the last month, I was distracted by games and other stuff, but i'm still working on it, i guess i'm just spending too much time on details... >_<

Recently, i've been working on the furnace buildings, at first i planned to have only one type of furnace at tech lvl 1 (the arc furnace), but as i researched more into the subject, i realised that an arc funace can't really smelt iron ore, so I spent several hours looking up blast furnaces, and now i have numbers for the input/output of those in terms of in-game ressources.

One thing that i like, is that, surprisingly, a blast furnace can work by using only lvl 1 ressources : Oxygen, Carbon, Carbonate (and Iron Ore). The ressource that i call "Carbonate" is really Calcium Carbonate, and it's also used in making Carbon, Concrete and Glass. In DF terms, it's Limestone, basically.

My only problem with calcium carbonate is that it seems to be a byproduct of organic life, which doesnt make much sense if you're colonizing a desert world, but it's too useful for me to not use it.

So yeah, slow progress for now, mostly crunching numbers for the buildings costs and productions but i really want to get an alpha version out as soon as possible so i'll keep at it, even if it feels like a snail pace.

Two other things, the first one is that i somewhat like learning new things (like "how does a blast furnace works"), and i sure learn a lot when i'm working on this game, and the second one is that i'm thinking about including the "pollution" from industries into the terraformation aspect of the game (which won't be in the first release though). Basically, i plan to let the player influence the atmosphere contents with dedicated terraforming facilities, and when i read about the blast furnace and it's CO2 output, i thought it would be cool to have it add to the process. (I just made a quick calculation, it seems that one would need to smelt several hundred billion tons of iron to make a terraforming-class change in the atmosphere of my planets).

[Starver]

My only problem with calcium carbonate is that it seems to be a byproduct of organic life, which doesnt make much sense if you're colonizing a desert world, but it's too useful for me to not use it.

Need it have been a desert world (or even significantly so, across its surface) since inception?  How about it being a desert now, oceans teeming with life a few millenia (or tens/hundreds, thereof) ago?  IIRC, Iron ores deposits are often a by-product of organic processes in oceans too, so it'd be a history useful for the other aspects of your starter-techs.  And coal essentially[1] needs your swampy forests, with the other hydrocarbons also reliant upon ocean-life.  And you can specify this explicitly (to the player) or just let it ride.  There may be pedants who wonder at the equivalence (who will also ask about the anthropomorphism of your supposedly alien races, unless you do a decent job at diversifying the bodyplans, without jumping the biomechanical shark in the process) but unless your backstory has something that I don't know of, I can't see any issue with this particular development.

(I just made a quick calculation, it seems that one would need to smelt several hundred billion tons of iron to make a terraforming-class change in the atmosphere of my planets).

It could be just one of various deliberate carbon-sourcing programs, inclusive of indiscriminate burning off of fossil fuels of all kinds.  And if the basic process of limestone (and coal/coke) processing and venting the CO₂ out into the atmosphere can't realistically create all the changing effects you want, all the auxiliary processes (transport, pre-processing, etc) and a number of other industries could contribute.  Not forgetting adding into the mix some even more powerful greenhouse gasses (e.g. releasing methane resources directly instead of burning them first).


So, no worries.

[1] Barring some non-earthly alternative for shuffling the elements around, but while I'm open to silicate-based life-forms reigning upon planets more suited to their arising from the fundament, I shall for now assume that your worlds are going to be (at least in the case of this starter planet) roughly of the Earth-style rocky body, if not currently climatically equivalent.