[...] eco mod [...]
Wow, thanks ! I can see how having an economic background can help a lot, that's the kind of things that would have taken me a ages to figure out without writing dedicated tools to do it for me.
Indeed, I'd be very interested in getting your modified files, it'll save me some time and more importantly, improve things for the next beta without me having to divert too much of my coding time into data modification. You can send a PM, but might as well post the link here so other people can use it right away if you want to.
Results from your experience look very good, I will probably have to readjust the costs (in parts) of ships a bit, which in turn will allow me to reduce the value of parts a bit, which will make the part factory breakeven at a speed a bit more consistent with the other factories.
By the way, that's also the first mod for my game, incidentally the first mod very likely to be officially integrated in the full game too, congratulations
(lesson learnt: go with tigsource with a 4x game and get input about the windowed mode not being screen centered, go to bay12 and get spreadsheets on how to improve your economic flow)I haven't bothered looking at any of the luxury factories yet, since you haven't implemented the purpose for em yet. In case you haven't noticed yet, I kinda enjoy mucking about with a game's economy innards, lol.
Yeah, I noticed and that's great
I have thought about about the luxuries, btw. They're likely to act in a somewhat similar fashion to ship parts. When they are moved/sold to a trade station, they'll be consumed to reduce the owner's War Weariness (if any). The differences being that the higher the ww, the higher they will be willing to pay, and that it can be traded between factions. WW effects should be increased accordingly, obviously.
While we're talking about the economy. Regarding solar power plants, I am toying with an idea as it may improve cargo traffic flow a bit, especially during the first few minutes (where it's really chaotic with everyone rushing in every direction at the same time). As the SPP have no resources requirements, instead of producing in big batches, they could continuously produce small amounts of energy. It would allow dock traders that arrive at what would have been a depleted SPP (beaten to the punch by another) to wait or at least come back with some resources. May also improve performances as they won't have to query their pathfinder to find another valid buying place as often.
You will probably have to re-balance things in favor of the core and swarm if you want them to hold their own again on the big map once you get the economy stabilized.
The core will get a make over soon, there's too many high hull / low shields combos as it is (asterian, swarm). I'll probably invert that logic with them while applying a buff.
One issue are laser weapons, due to their 100% accuracy (sort of), they're only depending on damage and range. I am likely to add a rotation/turn rate for these weapons so we can have more specialized ones (like short range and fast turn rate for fighter cleaning lasers). In turn it'll allow me to reduce the current nerf on core weaponry. Back in alpha, they used to have the longest range in the game, but it made them nearly invincible.
For the swarm, I am more likely to strengthen the gargants and hives and keep the queens intact to make sector infestations hard to clean up but manageable to prevent. We'll see.
The pirate capitals seem bugged in that you can build unlimited shipyards there.
Thanks, did not notice that one. Also, you can't build a military base if you've already built a shipyard in your capital sector while the AI can. (I am totally not using this thread as a to-do list, why would you think that :p)
Jump gates can only be built by automated ships. Players can make them by setting their empire to auto and leaving a ship to do it, but there isn't an option to build them.
I've added the option recently (i think it's somewhere in my last devlog), it'll be available in a week or two.
Pirate ownership of sectors seems permanent. Other AI won't conquer them, and player can't do so either - even if you wipe out all presence there and build a military base.
I have to say, giving the pirate factions more diversity and allowing them to grow and shrink could be an options
This one is a bit harder to explain. Pirate "owned" territory cannot be invaded and they cannot invade either. In fact, at their faction AI layer is simply limited to build stations. It's used to mark parts of the map I don't want anyone to claim (for performance or map design reasons), more specifically nebulae which have a strategic/military use by themselves. Factions can invade territory passing through pirate owned sectors:
[Faction A]-[Pirate]-[Faction B]
where [..] are sectors. Factions A and B can still invade each other here
(except if the sector has been tagged in a special way in the map editor, which is the case for some isolated core outposts).
That's not something I really want to change, at least not right now where there's no way for pirates to effectively defend their territory or take some (been there, done that in earlier versions, didn't work out well). Pirate AI is solely based on their stations which act independently. Ownership of their current sector is of little consequence to them. So, technically, I could rename the ownership to "lawless, unsuitable for colonization, ..." but apart from that nothing will change on that front until post 1.0.
I know that in a few maps, there are some pirate owned solar systems. But from the perspective of a player who doesn't want to grow as an empire or wants to take his time to do so, it makes sense to have a Tortuga and a Nassau that won't get erased by the might of the main factions a few hours into the game.
Incidentally, there's an exploit of sorts were you can indeed take over pirate sectors by declaring war on them, flagging the sector you want as a war target (which can be difficult, as you need claimed territory close-by) and blowing up a lot of their stuff. After a while (20 minutes or so), they'll send a peace offer that's likely to contain the targeted sector. It may be another sector though, or a lot of money, or both.
Perhaps silcon mines could also take construction materials and turn out solar cells that could be needed for new solar energy station facilities could be built and loaded into a building ship ( that could open up a even more diverse economy)
I am sorry, I am not sure I follow. Are you talking about adding "station building parts" in general ? Or adding a cost (in materials) to build solar power plants (and, why not, other factories) ? Or something else ? I'll assume it's one of the first two which are roughly similar.
Yes I have thought about adding station parts. The issue is that it would make money fairly useless to factions, diplomacy aside. Also the fact that factories solely need money to be built has gameplay reasons: do you save your money to expand your empire, do you use it to make more money by buying free traders / miners, do you use it to buy additional battleships from 3rd parties when you've reached your military cap? If you remove the station building from the equation, it makes for much fewer choices.
And about building materials (like 100 steel, 1000 ecells, 40 computers to build a SPP), apart from the fact it makes the economy much harder to balance properly, I don't like collecting stuff (hence the lack of ammo based weapons and fuel). Even so, if you do the collecting yourself, which can be fine at first, once you're grow big enough and start building multiple factories and stations at once, it will get old very fast. Of course, I'll have to add some command so the builders do the collecting for you, but then, it'll basically defeat the purpose and, from a gameplay perspective, it's no really different from selling those materials to get enough money to build the station or using building parts.
Cheers,
SK.
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Topic: unending galaxy (Read 36397 times)