Proportions Mod Versions 2.5.2 and 2.5.3 available

[oleg]

Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
I have noticed a way to reduce building times in 2.5.2 (or 2.5.1, I am not quite sure):

Build a Minor City then upgrade to Metropolis, I guess it would be the same with Megalopolis if it is in the same family. I saves about 30% material and time if you like to do the needed micromanagement, is it intended?

Same thing with research center I, upgrade to research megaplex III and others.

This topic has been debated hotly in older Proportions' tread. Yes, upgrading facilities vs building new from scratch can be beneficial but sometimes not. For example, it takes almost forever to fill huge brethable world with cultural facilities. So, in the time you build ciry and upgrade it to metroplolis I can build TWO cities if planetary space is not a problem.

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
[QB
EDIT: I am at about 25 years in my single player game and I can second that the AI does quite a good job, developing worlds, ship designs etc., nice ! Troops and WPs on homeworlds, grrrr [/QB]

Yes, I saw that too. I'm about 20 years into the game and I tried to take on a neutral Homeworld, and my mighty fleet got cut to pieces.
They had 50 WP, 10 of them Medium size, over 10 Space stations (mostly armed shipyards), about 40 sats, plus some 300 fighters and.....troops!

It was amazing, I felt as if I was really taking on a homeworld. I have to handle to PvK and all the others involved making Proportions, its the greatest mod I have ever played in any game. I'm so hooked that I find myself thinking about it when I shouldn't .

By the way, playing without any bonus, the AI out produce me and out research me. Though next time I will play without neutrals. Its too easy to lose 3/4 of my fleet in a battle and then retreat to the neighboring system and be secured because the AI can't attack me there. I'm not playing with neutrals no more. If that have been the Druks I would had probably lost a bunch of colonies until my fleet were able to hold the tide.

[PsychoTechFreak]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:

---

But I think the upgrades should take longer or at least as long as the building from scratch and this is not the case. Upgrades can be abused to save time and material. Wasn't there setting value for upgrade costs, maybe this might be tweaked a bit?

I am fairly certain that that was PvK's intention there.

---

Upgrade Facility Cost Percent := 50

Hmm, I mean this is ok for let's say research center 1 to upgrade to research center 3. With the extremely larger differences between e.g. minor city and metropolis or higher it looks like ... cheating? But it is OK, if there are good reasons or other restrictions that I do not see yet.

[Aloofi]

Originally posted by PsychoTechFreak:
[QBUpgrade Facility Cost Percent := 50

Hmm, I mean this is ok for let's say research center 1 to upgrade to research center 3. With the extremely larger differences between e.g. minor city and metropolis or higher it looks like ... cheating? But it is OK, if there are good reasons or other restrictions that I do not see yet.[/QB]

I think its kind of right.
Settlement: 5Kt of each resource
Col. Commun: 10 Kt of each
With 50 % upgrade it takes exactly the same time to build one colonial community than to build a settlement and then upgrade.

On the other hand, the investment return is far better on the lowly settlement than in the Colonial Comm.
Settlement cost: 5000 min.
Settlement prod: 125 min.
Returns investment in 40 turns (4 years)

colonial comm cost: 10 000 min.
colonial comm prod: 150 min.
Returns investment in 66 turns (6 years and 6 months)

Minor city cost: 15 000 min.
Minor city Prod: 175 min.
Returns investment in 85 turns (8 years and a half)

So its obvious that is better to build all the settlements you want first, and then start upgrading.
Still, building cities should be considered something like a personal goal or a show of power. Their output doesn't justifie their cost when you compare them to a mineral miner facility:

Mineral Miner I facility cost: 1800 min.
Mineral Miner I facility prod: 200 min.
Returns investment in 9 turns (9 months) and produce more than a minor city.

Mineral Miner Complex I cost: 11 000 min.
Mineral Miner Complex I prod: 400 min.
Returns investment in 27 turns (2 years and 7 months)

So replicating a Homeworld in a colony its just not impossible, but non-profitable, which I think acurately simulate that many things a Homeworld have are not just for profit, but a product of social and cultural evolution.

[Aloofi]

By the way, those numbers don't include the cost in organics and rads, cause those take over twice as long as minerals to get them back.

Cultural Center cost: 24Mt min.
Cultural Center Prod: 2000 min.
Returns investment in 12000 turns (1200 years)

[oleg]

That's a beauty of Proportions - sacrifice everything but protect Homeworld from evil aliens.
Last stand of 300 spartans and stuff..

[PsychoTechFreak]

[quote]Originally posted by Aloofi:

Settlement: 5Kt of each resource
Col. Commun: 10 Kt of each
With 50 % upgrade it takes exactly the same time to build one colonial community than to build a settlement and then upgrade.

Sure, in case of the upgraded facility costs twice as much as the starting facility. But it is another story if the difference is more than double value, like from minor city to metropolis for example:

Minor city 15000 (each min/org/rad)
Metropolis 100,000

You build a minor city and upgrade with 50,000 to Metropolis means you pay 65,000 overall, a profit of approx. a third (time and material)

Minor city to Megalopolis (250,000) even more:
15,000 + 125,000 =140,000

But I see, it seems to be a necessary kind of compromise. It does not have to be too expensive, so upgrades would not be worthwile against scrap-and-build, OTOH I think the compromise should be more between 60-80%.
Reasons for that:
-Refurbishing a house to a castle is more expensive than to scrap it and build a castle
-Usually the production output is lower than normal during upgrades, but the city is producing 100% during the upgrade activities

[ February 27, 2003, 08:54: Message edited by: PsychoTechFreak ]

[PvK]

Uuf... I catch the flu and fall way behind on this discussion. Actually, it's probably good to not to be always chiming in immediately, but it will be a while before I can cover everything. I will just throw in some ideas.

* Upgrades and return-on-investment times are generally things I have studied and done deliberately. That is, I expect people to consider upgrading from a city to a metropolis, instead of building a metropolis from scratch. It also makes more sense - metropoli are generally cities for a long time before they become metropoli.

* There is a major effect of lag and return-on-investment to be considered. The question of "which construction path is best?" can only be answered if you first answer the question "how soon do you need a return on your investment?" Often the best thing is to build as many small-scale facilities as possible first, and then build larger facilities one at a time. The dilemma becomes, that this makes the upgrade technique start to become impractical, because SE4 only lets you upgrade ALL facilities of a type at once. So, you end up with a huge spectrum of possible ways to develop, and many of them are "the best" for different times by which you want the return.

* Having said that, I wouldn't consider it "wrong" to increase the facility upgrade cost. I think anything in the 50-100% range will work well. Below 50% will start to cause unintended effects.

* The "upgrade a house to a castle" argument doesn't really apply, I think, because facility "slots" should not be taken to literally represent real estate limits. Planets are enormous, and upgrading from say, a city to a metropolis, does not necessarily require doing anything problematic to the city.

PvK

[dogscoff]

Still, building cities should be considered something like a personal goal or a show of power.

If you're talking purely in terms of mineral production, then yes, but you forget all the other advantages a city facility can provide:
Resource storage
Shield generation
Unit storage
Research, intel, org and rad production
Space port and resupply (in some cities).

These are not to be discounted, especially on those planets or systems where you only have one or two facility slots and you want to cram as much as possible into a limited space. In my single player proportions games the vast majority of my facilities are cities of one kind or another.

[Aloofi]

Well, I was just posting some numbers I took to find out my own building path, but I don't feel like any change needs to be made.
The way I see it, the goal of unreplicable homeworlds have been acomplished, and as I said before, not everything in a city is for profit.
The only change I made on Facilities.txt was to add shields and more cargo space to spaceport facilities to represent the spaceport fortifications that I believe every spaceport should have by default.

One question though, how do you guys feel about adding 3 more shipyards facilities to regular tech comparable to temporal shipyards?
I just think that most racial traits are highly unbalancing.