Planets and Resources

[MarcoPolo]

Yeh hehe. I was also thinking the same thing. I believe I posted something about having 15 races split up into 5 distinct types, each type being able to have different more favourability to living in hostile barren or acidic or as you put it gas giants, so that not every race will be seeking the same world types. Kind of like a Starcraft-esque feeling to having that diverse dynamics allowing for completely different conditions for victory and conquest. According to my little list your race type would probably fall closest to my race 5 denomination, being methane worlds and hot jupiters as a habitat.

If it were upto me I would offer those different race advantages and disadvantages in order to spice things up and have a richer universe of alien types. Can you imagine how that throws a spanner in the works for players? Just think, if your human in the sol system, you not only have to think about safeguarding your homeworld and colonies, but perhaps also routinely making sure your gas giant planets that are primarily only used for mining with orbital platforms... suddenly infested with low orbit settlements from some gas entity. Would make for some interesting tactical considerations in the game Or 2 gas planet dependant species vying for the same jovian worlds in some titanic battles.

Good idea dude. To this point I had only considered terrestrial worlds and their variations from hostile acidic, barren, volcanic, water worlds, to artic ice worlds as variation enough to get aliens vying for their preferred rock types :P

Well keep the ideas coming people.

[pydna]

Perhaps rather than hardcoding the definitions of 15 races maybe each race is based on 3 or 4 hab range characteristics, this determines the type of planets they like.

These have are not absolutes, for instance lets say I find a world that meets most of the criteria for being habitable by my race with only one criteria just outside what I need. I could colonise the world and aim to terraform it to make it fully habitable.

Ofcourse some other race may have liked just how it was...gee I wonder how wars get started??

[Gregstrom]

That'd be pretty much like the system Stars! used. It's good, but I'd like to see the differences between rock worlds and gas giants represented better.

[MarcoPolo]

Originally Posted by pydna

Perhaps rather than hardcoding the definitions of 15 races maybe each race is based on 3 or 4 hab range characteristics, this determines the type of planets they like.

These have are not absolutes, for instance lets say I find a world that meets most of the criteria for being habitable by my race with only one criteria just outside what I need. I could colonise the world and aim to terraform it to make it fully habitable.

Ofcourse some other race may have liked just how it was...gee I wonder how wars get started??

Thats precisely what I was hoping for mate! And you made a solid point that wars could in fact start this way. Imagine competing races with different habitat requirements laying waste to a pristine earth world in order to turn it into a volatile volcanic planet.

Of course we would in turn see ourselves turning a mars type/barren planet into a lush rainforest as a "good thing!" maybe not so to a lifeform that thrives on low temperatures and low pressure atmospheres. Or an Earth type planet completely flooded by an aquatic race in order to submerge the remaining land masses to open up more areas for population.

Naturally all these terraforming options would not be an easy thing to accomplish overnight for any particular race. Many of which would take some heavy investing in infrastructure to get the ball rolling, so the habitat requirements being initially met is what would draw races to certain planet types. This would guarantee every new game remains unique and interesting. As any game would unfold completely different to the last one depending on how many race types you allow into your multiplayer or single player scenarios.

IMHO Its difficult to come by such elaborate systems in this type of genre. Lately I been playing Armada 2526, it seems to offer some diversity and certain race types seem to have some habitat requirements unique to themeselves alone. Stuff like living in spaceships as a natural means of civilisation or preferring cold desolate worlds for the more bizarre lifeforms. Maybe its one to take a look at for fans of these type of games. At least until the illustrious and eagerly anticipated "Star Legacy" hits the scene.

Anyways food for thought.

[NiknudStunod]

It has been a while since someone posted on this so i figured i would pipe in with what I think.

I think there should be several categories of planets and resources for a good 4x space game. There should be a reason you are plopping down a colony on a lifeless barren work or asteroid. The reason should be rare resources. I hate to make a comparison but if you look at a planet like dune {hostile, waterless, nearly lifeless world} the reason it was fought over was the spice. These resources could be anything from Bonus to fleet armor to increasing the distance your ships can travel. You could also add in bonuses to controlling these planets over long periods of time. I also think resources should not be limitless. You need to have a reason to keep moving out exploring and expanding.

[jRides]

I would prefer at least some control over the planets. I would agree with the idea put forward to scale it up into zones. Either the player selects or the planet defines the zones. These zones then increase in effectiveness with population and tech - limited by the amount your willing to spend on planetary improvement.

Besides the staples like Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, Mining and Research you could get more defined with zones like Shipyards, System Capitals, Religious Centres, Military Bases and so on.

As you research and unlock new building types, they are just added to a zone as a bonus as it builds up increasing the output of the zone with multipliers. Refinement could come by allowing you to focus specific zones - like a research zone into a military research complex giving bonuses to weapons research or adding second slipway to a shipyard (can now build two ships of the same type at the same time and ofc doubles its resource use).

You could get quite deep into it, optional choices like amount of focus a specific zone gets: percentage of improvement budget, percentage of workforce assigned etc. if you wanted to change it from your empires default.

As to the resources - again I agree that SE's three resources worked well, it would be nice to see a few more maybe as a second tier in that they are rare and would only be used in such things as trade, luxuries or some weird weaponry type. It would mean systems/planet abundant in this rarer tier of resource might become more desirable, or research focus into better extraction/refinement of these resources an option, just not a required one.

[MattII]

What's going to be the smallest object that we can colonise? Something around the Size of Pluto? Or is it going to be smaller, around the size of 2-Pallas/4-Vesta, or 31-Euphrosyne, or, hells how about 13-Egeria (still over 8 million cubic Km)?

As for resources, 3 works well, although I wouldn't say no to having some rarer ones in as well.

[Gregstrom]

Well, why not have a generic 'asteroid base' colony that can be fitted into unused parts of a solar system? That way, the game only has to represent planets, gas giants etc. You could have colonisation zones for the Kuiper Belt, Oort Cloud and so on (whatever use that might be).

[MattII]

Originally Posted by Gregstrom

Well, why not have a generic 'asteroid base' colony that can be fitted into unused parts of a solar system?

Fine by me, I'm just looking for size thresholds.

How many facilities for those asteroid bases do you think, just 3 or 4?

[Gregstrom]

Realistically, a pretty large number. A hollowed out asteroid of decent size (20+ km radius? The solar system has thousands in this size bracket, I believe) could readily hold a population of some millions and employ them all usefully. It'd be pretty vulnerable compared to a planet, though.