SE4 Map analyser

[Suicide Junkie]

I was thinking of making an SE4 map analyser, for helping to make sure the distribution of planets for gas/ice/rock and each atmosphere stays fair.

It would have to read the quadranttypes, and get you to pick one, probably.
Then it would grab the info from the planetsizes.txt to get statistics on the value of each planet size.
And then it would scan the sectortypes file to get find how many of each get placed, and total the value of each surface/atmosphere combo.

Now, the question is, what stats does it need to end up with?

Total Facility slots for sure.
Total Population capacity too.

If it reads settings.txt for the popmodifiers too:
Total SY rate?
Total production rate?

[Aiken]

You can consider future conVersion of all asteroids to planets. Just an idea.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by aiken:
You can consider future conVersion of all asteroids to planets. Just an idea.

To me, this does not seem like it would affect the balance at all. The planets have the exact same chance of becoming a particular planet type as when a planet is generated when the map is first made. The balance should be unaffected, unless you do something silly like make all asteroids tiny... but I am not sure that you can even call for specific sized asteroids in SystemTypes.txt...

[Suicide Junkie]

I hadn't thought of finite games...

That would be exactly proportional to the count of colonizable planets, would it not?

[Aiken]

Yes, it would... I just figured out that my request was kinda silly: average percentage of resources (as well as total res for finites) will be always the same, so no need to calculate it. Sorry.

[Suicide Junkie]

True, but you would still need the program to output the count of planets, which wasn't in the list yet.

[Baron Munchausen]

Do you know the format of SE IV map files? Or is this only reading the text files (Quadrant_types and System_types)? If it is only using the text files, the use of 'random' ('any') values would make analysis rather difficult. If you can actually read map files it would be interesting to produce statistics on how connected systems are as well as planetary tallies. Number of systems unconnected, number connected to only one other system, number connected to two other systems, etc.

[Suicide Junkie]

The point of this would be to read the mod, and tell you how fair the random maps are expected to be without a lot of playtesting and map generation.

[Aiken]

Ok, yet another suggestion: is it possible to calculate average resource richness or total amount of resources (in finite res game)?

[PvK]

Hmm. Number of planets, and number of planets per system, and distance between systems with planets of a certain type, also have effects on balance. Balance is also different depending on Empires' traits. If ya really care that much.

PvK

[ May 22, 2004, 02:45: Message edited by: PvK ]