New Mod Project: Space Colonization

[seille]

ORIGINAL: Vic
You might want to put max EP higher though since for a single unit it is now not possible to save the  300 EP needed to build a spacedock.

I must agree. The construction unit should generate at least the 300 EP needed for a spacedock.

[Vic]

I want to say sorry for the frustrating ride for Grymme.
But its true, it felt a bit unfair.
You might want to consider a cheaper Anti-Air unit of like 100 or 200 points to be producable with like only own hex as range, but the ability to stand itself versus 2 times worth the production points in airunits.
In the end indeed i did not need ground fighting and could just use myairforce,eventually something like 5 fighters and 3 ground strikers to kill all opposition before moving in.
 
Furthermore a cheaper sort of garrison unit could be an idea.Maybe costing only 50 points and having no, or very little offensive potential.
 
Also i cant get supply to flow from Jupiter to an asteroid mine maybe 25 hexes further eastwards in the inner astroid belt.
 
It has been fun though and i am now starting to build a small space navy, hopefully in time. But i'll need like 4 turns to get it build up.
 
Forgot to send the turn yesterday night, but did it now.
 
Kind reg,
Vic

[Grymme]

No probs. Have to loose sometimes
 
I think there needs to be an truck unit for transfering supplies over land/planets. Or are there?
 
And what do you do to loacate the wormholes to different planets. Have been trying to locate the wormhole to lalande for 5-8 rounds now. Havent found it. Using explorers.

[Lunaticus_matrixforum]

Well the wormhole to Lalande is on one of the outermost hexes of the SolarSystem in the SW quadrant. It is placed randomly there somewhere so this changes for each game.
I attached a graphic with the game map and indicated in yellow the potential hexes (please excuse my bad graphics ability). Flying with a scout to a hex which is next to the wormhole will find it.
The wormholes to the other 3 planets are in the corresponding other quarter-circels.
And then you might just ask Vic if he will be so kind to share the location of the wormhole with you as he seems to have found it [:)]

[seille]

searched myself for a wormhole for a very long time.
Now i know i searched the wrong area the whole time....
 
I´ll lose my earth spaceport which is not to defend.
I have no idea how to build even a small army or ship group in the 24 turns i played so far.
I was busy with producing supply.
The ratio of supply need (alone the transport ships) and supply i can produce without any special
locations is very bad. Same for the price of most combat units.
All i was able to produce so far was a couple of construction units, some ground forces and transport ships.
 
I really looking forward to a version with doubled production capacity, doubled (max) EP generation, increased supply range
and so on. Not to talk about combat which need probably a lot of balancing, too. Lol, i fear i´ll not be able to
report any combat related problems since i simply don´t have anything to fight with....
Sadly i cannot buy units direct by using my tons of superior minerals....
 
Sounds a bit frustrated ? Yes, i am...expected the scenario to be more playable already.
BUT: The scenario has great potential !! It simply need a lot of development to balance it.
Think the latest adjustments are helpful here.
 

[Grymme]

Agree with you on the frustration. Maybe time to call the game quits.

My main suggestions.

- Beef up all production*3 Make locations produce 1K,3K and 5K (or something like that)
- Cut cost of initial research by 50 %
- Cut cost of trading so that you only loose 10% each time (that will be enough to make smart players use it, but think carefully before doing so).
- New units needed. AA and ground unit that gives Landcap
- Beef up "SEACAP" at least times 10
- Fix supply issues generally (dont know what exactly, but my units are all out of supply and cannot dock for example).
- Make more buildable locations in the universe. Each regime should have at least 10-15 potentially buildable locations. As it is now you can just give up when you loose a planet. I am actually pro making the asteroidfields buildable. (maybe they can only build crappy locations)
- Cost of locations should be much lower. We have played 24 rounds and as i understand it nobody has built a spacedock yet.

My suggestion for a interesting economy/exploration/development would go something like this
Round 1-3: Pure exploration
Round 4-6: Establishing the 2-3 first bases.
Round 7: Building first defensive warship. Each nation has ca 100 in groundforces (total in empire)
Round 8-10: Establishing and consolidating initial empire. Each empire should at round 10 have some 10-15 Warships, 200-300 SFTs of groúnd units and 5-6 bases (at least 1 of the biggest)
Round 11-15: First War, First Researches, Eating up/exploring most of the known universere.

So basicly that woule be a preffered timeline for me.

As all places are taken each empire should be able to produce at ca 100 ground SFTs, 5-10 Warships and a research every 4-5 rounds.


This may sound like a lot of critizism. But i think the scenario is basicly very well built. But the economic modell was that of a constant state of Biafra.

[seille]

Hey Grymme, that sounds good. I´m glad you ask for nearly the same things i did.
Faster buildup and more production.
I can completely agree.
 
Btw, i´m actually building a spacedock, but it´s not finished even after two turns with 5 construction pods working at...
I´ll need 2 or 3 more turns....
 
Your timeline i would also prefer over the actual one with 25 turns flying around and repairing locations...
 
btw, my ground units get also no supply even only one hex beside a supply producing port.

[Lunaticus_matrixforum]

Sure we will accelerate things, make production much higher and supply and units get transferred much more easily...
I am very curious as to the supply bug with ground units getting no supply one hex next to a supply producing port (I remember Grymme also had that problem on Jupiter). Do we have a screenshot of that? Or the exact location? I very much would like to understand that one, most of the other topics is probably adjusting settings and numbers....

[seille]

Is this the supply range problem ??

In rulevar 41 it is set to movetype 10, which is the one for explorers
(very high movecosts).
Is this the annoying problem i fight with since turn one ?
Is this the reason all my ground troops are always hungry ?

[seille]

@lunaticus
Looking at my screenshot i think it could be the supply range problem.
It has nothing to do with Jupiter. It´s the same on Venus.
Units one hex beside ports get no or very few supplies.

[Lunaticus_matrixforum]

So did I understand correctly:
You have a spaceport with a HQ sitting on the Spaceport. The spaceport produces supply which goes to the HQ. And you have  a ground unit adjacant to the HQ which is attached to the HQ and it gets no supply?
Hmm if this is the case I would say this is not working as it should. But I am not sure the rulevar above influences this. I am not sure I completely understood the exact setting though.

[seille]

Yes, that´s the case Lunaticus.
That unit get only about 20% for several turns now.
 

[Lunaticus_matrixforum]

Well this should not happen. As I have not come across this myself so far would it be possible to send me some screenshot of this? If at all possible with the HQ and the unit including the unit stats in the lower left corner? Would like to root this one out.
Rulevar41 should not play a role here as this afaik regulates how you can move a HQ which has more supply stored then it can ordinarily carry with its units. The setting to movetype 10 basically should allow a HQ to move normally even with excess supply.

[seille]

I´ll look at this the next turns.

[seille]

I still do not produce enough supply for most of my systems.
But it´s not my fault. It´s simply the bad balance between production capacity and supply need [:(]

However while most of my units get at least enough to keep a good readiness level my units
at the ruins of Venus get NOTHING ! 0 supply since many turns. I have no idea why.
Is the terrain or the small amount of supply requested (2) the problem ?

I don´t think the game will go on forever especially since i saw your empire this turn Lunaticus.
Yes, the cards work [:D]
Did you capture all the stations or build yourself ? Think you had the best strategy, but probably also the
insider knowledge to pick the right locations for the first bases [;)]
Again: impressive imperium

[Lunaticus_matrixforum]

Well I played like 5 solitaire testgames with 4 empires each so thats about 20 testgames so I had some time to adopt a strategy and I know this is very unfair.  Actually I did build nearly all things myself (except for the spaceport I took from you Seille). It can be done if you produce Construction Pods in the beginning and have a good mix of spacestations and spaceports and the occasional ressource and then switch over to unit production later. But then again I will change the economic model as discussed.
Please do send me a screenshot of HQ and the unit on Venus which do not get supply (with lower left info screen if possible). Was not able to reproduce it but would like to find it.

[seille]

i´ll make a screenshot when i get the next turn
and send to you. Next turn my HQ will get about 300 supply,
so if the unit(s) then still get 0 of 2 requested something must be wrong.
 
 

[Lunaticus_matrixforum]

I think I was finally able to reproduce the supply bug mentioned above .... in WaW.
The root cause seems to be that the ground unit has a supply burn rate of 1. This is the same as a staff unit in WaW (tested with the Revised version but should be version independent). Set up a unit (not a HQ) with just one staff next to a HQ. Total supply burn rate of the unit is 1. First turn it loads supply and regains 100% readiness, all is fine. Then next turn it thinks it is well stocked, does not request supply but tries to use the supply it has stored. But as the unit is at 100% readiness it consumes one-half-supply which is rounded down to 0. But for the supply calculation the system finds out that the unit did not eat any supply at all and drastically reduces the readiness. (This is what you see with your ground unit.) Then on the next turn the unit - now being with lower readiness - wants to eat 1 supply and gets this amount and recovers. After it is back at 100% readiness it again tries to eat only one-half supply and drops again in readiness and so on and on...
Now I understand that in this mod it is much more likely that you have a unit with just one ground troop than it is at WaW to have a unit with exactly one staff...
I actually wanted to do some good to the ground unit by setting it to low supply requirement but the effect was more on the contrary [X(]
Will set the supply need of the ground unit to 2. A workaround might be to always stack at least 2 ground units together....

[Vic]

ORIGINAL: Lunaticus

I think I was finally able to reproduce the supply bug mentioned above .... in WaW.
The root cause seems to be that the ground unit has a supply burn rate of 1. This is the same as a staff unit in WaW (tested with the Revised version but should be version independent). Set up a unit (not a HQ) with just one staff next to a HQ. Total supply burn rate of the unit is 1. First turn it loads supply and regains 100% readiness, all is fine. Then next turn it thinks it is well stocked, does not request supply but tries to use the supply it has stored. But as the unit is at 100% readiness it consumes one-half-supply which is rounded down to 0. But for the supply calculation the system finds out that the unit did not eat any supply at all and drastically reduces the readiness. (This is what you see with your ground unit.) Then on the next turn the unit - now being with lower readiness - wants to eat 1 supply and gets this amount and recovers. After it is back at 100% readiness it again tries to eat only one-half supply and drops again in readiness and so on and on...
Now I understand that in this mod it is much more likely that you have a unit with just one ground troop than it is at WaW to have a unit with exactly one staff...
I actually wanted to do some good to the ground unit by setting it to low supply requirement but the effect was more on the contrary [X(]
Will set the supply need of the ground unit to 2. A workaround might be to always stack at least 2 ground units together....

I can confirm this. This bug will be fixed in the next game release. In the meantime the at least 2 supply need setting for the sftypes in question will avoid the bug. Actually i would recommend sticking to even values,4, 8 ,16

Furthermore i wanted to say i am quite happy with the gameplay. I am enjoying my turns. And actually i build a space dock a few turns ago but am finding it very slow to repair it. 2 engineers only repaired like 60 str.dammage points ...

But production is now slowly increasing.. 2 destroyers and 4 missiles a turn.
I find it strange Seille is in so much problems... he forget to get a Gas Giant? Because i am getting like 1500 supply points in every turn just from my supply hexes on the gas giants.

I would support most improvement ideas, but you should use your own judgement of course.

[Lunaticus_matrixforum]

Yes I think the mod should be fun to play and in the current form it is not there yet [8|] Even in my solitaire playtests I never realised that you need many more units to defend yourself probably because my subconscious knew that the other regimes would not attack me or so.
But there will be a new version and I hope a new playtest....
So I will add a lot more free units and constructors in the first turns to get people started and provide some defenses. Also stations etc will get produced faster as well as ground units and ships. There were several more very good suggestions I am currently implementing. I am also thinking about redoing the research model (degroup and remove 1st level tech while making all research much cheaper).
However it will still be a game where resources and units are not overly abundant, otherwise it would not be a colonization experience imo.

I also saw that Vic opened up the space combat attacking my peaceful scout but my shields have been holding so far. So I hope we get to see some action there soon, too. Small addition from my side: Ships without shields are very vulnerable. And against bombers it is recommended to bring some fighters or at least point-defense ships.