[UMOD] Redesigning technology tree

[Yitzi]

And back to the drawing board, with Life Support. Probably I noticed that few years back, as I now recall... When I had built too many facilities and my income got to -11, I soon got one of the Life Support facilities disassambled. Unfortunatelly, population did not decrease from 3 to 1. So a player can potentially build it for pop growth and then for the time of keeping it steady, destroy it saving each turn its high upkeep cost.
It will not work.

What you really want, I think, is to make the cost of a colony pod increase with the number of bases+colony pods you own.  (Probably some constant plus some amount proportional to the number of bases+pods.)  Which is not possible currently, but when I start taking requests it is definitely a viable possibility.

[Mart]

I had also another idea, that would make maintenance cost dependent on population size, but it is not possible to give "regular" citizens, workers, talents and drones, the effects in lab, economy and psych, the same as other specialists. Then it would very closely mimic civ4. Let's say talents and workers would cost -1 economy, but drones -2. One could even think of disabling somehow drone riots, since a player would pay for drones more than for workers and talents. Closely to what's in civ4, where unhappy citizens do not work, but there are no riots stopping all city production, science, food production. But I tried to add to workers effects like for specialists and it did not work. 

[Geo]

Mart, how about just placing a -3 growth at one of the 4 basic SE tabs? It would be a hard barrier to cross for most factions until they put up a facility giving + growth, or certain techs are researched offering + growth when SE is changed then.

[Yitzi]

I had also another idea, that would make maintenance cost dependent on population size, but it is not possible to give "regular" citizens, workers, talents and drones, the effects in lab, economy and psych, the same as other specialists. Then it would very closely mimic civ4. Let's say talents and workers would cost -1 economy, but drones -2. One could even think of disabling somehow drone riots, since a player would pay for drones more than for workers and talents. Closely to what's in civ4, where unhappy citizens do not work, but there are no riots stopping all city production, science, food production. But I tried to add to workers effects like for specialists and it did not work.

I would not advise adding it like for specialists, since then it would be multiplied by multiplier facilities.

In any case, having maintenance per population is an interesting idea, but the result would end up being crippling in the early game and fairly trivial in the late game (where you get a lot of resources per citizen anyway).

I think what you might want is to have the maintenance per population increase with your population.

Mart, how about just placing a -3 growth at one of the 4 basic SE tabs? It would be a hard barrier to cross for most factions until they put up a facility giving + growth, or certain techs are researched offering + growth when SE is changed then.

Actually, I think -3 growth stops all growth, so it'd essentially mean everyone except Yang and Maar is unable to grow until they get Planetary Networks or Ethical Calculus.

[Geo]

Mart, how about just placing a -3 growth at one of the 4 basic SE tabs? It would be a hard barrier to cross for most factions until they put up a facility giving + growth, or certain techs are researched offering + growth when SE is changed then.

Actually, I think -3 growth stops all growth, so it'd essentially mean everyone except Yang and Maar is unable to grow until they get Planetary Networks or Ethical Calculus.

Yes, that's the idea. A mostly hardcap to exceeding size 1 bases (at least, for most factions), no tinkering with maintenance costs, and not losing an important popcap facility from the beginning.
Just go the right tech(s), pick the right SE setting(s), and you're free of bonds.

[Mart]

Growth penalty is faction-wide. An interesting idea for some story plots. Base-based penalty can be available throughout all game, when it is not cancelled by a tech. High colony pod mineral cost already slows down base spawning. Maybe this is mostly enough. To get a new base to make another colony pod in reasonable amount of turns, one needs to make it productive by growing it - getting more population. I intend to make crawlers very expensive. I think playing with facilities costs can give some decent results.

[Kilkakon]

Just a quick note: in my LE game, I give Grav Struts for free on Colony Pods and Workers. These give the extra move yet retaining the classic appearance if that is what you want.

It's still a challenge though, trying to defeat ICS. Good luck on trying to make the game more realistic.

[Mart]

Yes, although with pre-defined units, such capabilities can be reverse-engineered. This can be blocked by introducing more abilities than 2, so that antigrav struts are not available to other units in workshop. I gave colony pods more move points by chassis properties - infantry has 2. It has its drawbacks - infantry is "hardcoded" in the game as chassis with 1 move point. This way infantry chassis gets mobile description. I placed some remedies, they are not pretty, but it is a question of getting used to. On the other hand, one can think of infantry as beeing mechanized, like in civ series. Colony pods with 2 move points are rather sufficient. On roads they often move enough tiles to establish a base right away.

[Kilkakon]

Fortunately with Grav-Struts they stay as Infantry as far as those bonuses are concerned.

And yeah I had basic costs in my game so high (as everything was predesigned) that workshop was completely useless.

[Yitzi]

Fortunately with Grav-Struts they stay as Infantry as far as those bonuses are concerned.

And yeah I had basic costs in my game so high (as everything was predesigned) that workshop was completely useless.

Easier way to make workshop useless (which I seem to remember you also did) is set everything's prerequisite to "disable".

[Kilkakon]

Yeah I used to do that until BU told me it would be better to make it useless than make the game crash.

[Buster's Uncle]

I did?

-Makes sense, though.

[Yitzi]

Yeah I used to do that until BU told me it would be better to make it useless than make the game crash.

Wait, the game crashes if you set all the non-premade units to "disable"?

[Kilkakon]

Yep. The datalinks become crash to desktop buttons. :O Doing anything in the workshop except closing it crashed the game too.

[Yitzi]

Yep. The datalinks become crash to desktop buttons. :O Doing anything in the workshop except closing it crashed the game too.

I can probably fix those, although it's a rare enough situation that it's not making the short list.