New starbase idea

I like the idea, one can never have a high enough PQ!

I had another idea...what about another technology and series of upgrades to allow for faster ship travel for all of your ships in the sector?

The research already exists, controlled wormholes, or gravity mastery, or both?

Constructors would upgrade the star base and retro-fit them with gravity well generators to allow your ships to fly faster in that sector.

You can already do this with GalCiv Writer. Well at least the latest beta.


~SDC~

I take that back, there isn't a way to affect PQ with SB modules. At least not thru GalCiv Writer.

~SDC~

Actually, it's VERY imbalancing. Originally, one of the resources--I forget which one--aided in terraforming, and things got out of hand very quickly.

A _good_ starbase idea, not a _new_ starbase idea.

Cari,

I wonder if the imbalance occurred because of how it was implemented? It's not too difficult to see how a terraforming resource would throw a spanner in the works. What if you created a new class of modules built specifically to terraform planets, then allowed terraforming in the following way?

- Terraforming a PQ12 planet into a PQ13 planet requires the building of a module with a cost of 1200.
- Terraforming the new PQ13 (or any PQ13) planet requires a module with a cost of 1300.
- This method of terraforming will only work on planets between PQ7 and PQ13. Too drastic for habitable worlds, not advanced enough to work with gas giants and rocks.

Would this still create imbalance? Would it be workable from a coding standpoint?

End transmission?

~SDC~

So this would be different than a social project in that it would help all the planets of appropriate levels in the sector and you wouldn't actually need to colonize the planet first to get the pq bonus?

It's workable from a code standpoint. Not sure about the balance. It might be something that we'd have to try. Maybe we could implement it starting out as a special mod, that wouldn't let you submit scores to the metaverse, but people who wanted to could help us to test it.

I'll add it to my list and I'll bring it up the next time we're discussing new features.

CariElf,

When I first thought of it, I was thinking that it would affect all planets within the sector that were colonized by the owner of the starbase.

Uninhabited planets and alien worlds would not be affected (a huge waste of resources). On a science level, the starbase itself helps in creating fields necessary to maintain certain atmospheric conditions around the planets.

In game play, you might need three mods before this even takes affect (cost unknown). Then one or two more may be added to better the PQ even more.

For instance:
3 mods = 1 PQ bonus
4 mods = 2 PQ bonus (not cumulative)
5 mods = 3 PQ bonus (still not cumulative)

That was just my idea. I've found that PQ is probably the most influencial number in the game, so I's expect it to be costly.

Don't forget...if the starbase gets destroyed, PQ goes down and people die!

Alz

Sorry Cari, I lost this thread. If you're question was directed at my suggestion:

This would be different than a social project in that it would help a single planet in a single system. Similar to a colonization event, but instead of colonizing a planet, the planet is terraformed up one level. From colonization to terraforming seems intuitively to be comparable code, but I'm not sure how you'd work the cost the way I suggested (PQ11=1100, PQ12=1200, etc). Maybe a static cost of 1500 to 2000? It would certainly give you something to do in the later stages of large games when you could afford to build constructor modules with a cost of 2000.

End transmission.

~SDC~

"I like the idea, one can never have a high enough PQ!"

not ture i was playing in the english.STR and then started with a 123PQ earth and guess what the exspences for haveing it with just 1 billion it were so crippling that i was in dept in 4 turns

We couldn't make a module that would affect just one planet in one system; it would get too complicated.

Having it affect just planets colonized by the civ who built the starbase would be less complicated.

This suggestion reminds me of one of the short stories in Asimov's "I, Robot", the one where the two guys who always have to test new robots are up on a space station that beams energy to Earth and one of the robots starts his own religion.

Well...I finally downloaded that patch. It would seem that the mods for faster (or slower) ship speed is available. DAMN, I SHOULD HAVE BEEN A GAME DESIGNER!

To CariElf:

"We couldn't make a module that would affect just one planet in one system; it would get too complicated.

Having it affect just planets colonized by the civ who built the starbase would be less complicated."

This is from a code standpoint right? I still think it should only affect colonized planets within the sector. Anything more would be imbalancing.

Lastly, do multiple upgraded starbases in a single sector have cumulative bonuses to ship movement, attack, defense bonuses, etc?

In other words, would 2 beefed up starbases have more of an effect than just one?

Alz

Alzandrion, they're cumulative.

Yep, I meant from a code standpoint. Starbase bonuses are already set up to work on your colonized planets, so that's not a problem.

If we did do modules for sensors, or pq, and things like that, we'd probably have to put caps on them.

Cari,

What if you use a colony ship instead of a constructor as the base ship-code for the PQ upgrade? Colony ships affect uncolonized planets, right? Could you modify colony ship code to create a terraformer ship? This horse isn't dead, it's pining for the fjords.

End transmission.

~SDC~

We could make a terraformer ship, which would be the easiest of all solutions. Maybe make artificial planet or something the pre-req and make it really expensive...

Yup, I figured it as "a new class of modules", but that's what I was thinking. Limit it to terraforming planets of PQ13 and less (max PQ14) so that you can bring planets up to viable colony status. After that, you would have to colonize the planet in order to get further terraforming benefits. It would make Artificial Planets more meaningful and give us something worthwhile to fill the empty spaces of late-game play. Just say no to constructor churn!

End transmission.

~SDC~

I just switched gears...now I like Captain Bizarre's idea better!



I think max PQ for the new mods should bring uninhabitable planets to PQ 15 (not 14 as you suggested) IMHO

Then the rest is colonize like normal... That would definitely kep me interested later in the end game...as well as change alot of my colonizing strategies DURING the game.

Good call Cap!

If Stardock could use submitted games to pinpoint when star bases start to proliferate, then cross-reference that with the most recently researched techs in those games, that would indicate the best spot to insert the "Tech_Requirement" tech for a terraformer ship. (Maybe tie it to "Atmospheric Conditioning" per Alzandrion's suggestion?)

Then we could talk about late-game project churn on the social side!

End transmission.

~SDC~

Ah, for a Garden of Eden Creation Kit... but a terraformer device should be VERY expensive, as improving a planet's atmosphere and ecosystem would take an incredible amount of effort in addition to substantial bio-engineering skill and climatology.

Why not just make a Terraformer ship, straight up? Each Terraformer costs equal to a constructer, and it does 1/PQ worth of improving the world to the next PQ? Takes PQ worth of Terraforming to get it to the next PQ? It would only be able to work on worlds that have no people on it, due to the world changing effects being so catastrophic effects?

Who cares if the world is PQ15 or not? If you leave a PQ15 world empty, the AI will try to colonize it if it KNOWS about it, so you aren't going to push a world past 15 except in places you have total control. Close out the "Ring of ships" cheese by allowing non-warring ships to pass each other, and now players will NOT be able to protect their investment with a ring to keep other players away.

For balance purposes, the Terraforming ships could have tech limits on just what lowest PQ they could work on. So you could get them early, and they'd work on PQ 14... a tech improvement, and then 13... and this could continue onward so that in late game, you could push those 5s up to 15. And the more peaceful AI would be doing the same... *evil grin*

Super Formers could come in later in the game, allowing just two or three Super Formers to push a PQ 14 to PQ 15...

The key point would be... if the AI isn't tuned for this approach, Brad would probably want to kill this tech line/feature, as it would just be a dominant peaceful cheese for the human.