Cottages?

[woodelf]

So what are we planning to do about cottages in Planetfall?

Maniac tongue in cheekly mentioned something about self replicating nano stuff, but the tiles have to be worked in order to "grow".

Do we have some sort of sci-fi improvement that when worked will become more efficient and generate more output?

Do you have to increase commerce or can food or production be increased as well or instead?

Do we even want to worry about this yet or ever?

 

[Rubin]

Cottages is a feature I have mixed experiences with.

If the feature (in whatever form) makes sense, can be balanced, and adds to the fun let's keep the feature.

If not, I won't mind omitting cottages.

 

[woodelf]

I prefer having technological advances improving yields from tiles more than using cottages personally. That or civic or SE choices increasing yields.

 

[Gerikes]

Eek. I had something to post in this thread and I forgot about it.

I just wanted to say that one thing I liked about cottages is that it sort of forced you to defend you land. Sometimes it's easy to just have an enemy walk in and just retreat to your city. If they take down some improvements, big deal, at least you're not dead.

With cottages being such long-term investments, if they knock down the level, you're looking at a long time wasted.

 

[woodelf]

If they could be tied to something someone put in the culture thread...something about becons to expand territory. You'd defend them!

Or if they were somehow capacitors that derived energy directly from Planet? You would certainly not mwant to see them either razed or "syphoned" off which could be what the enemy does when they are pillaged? Thoughts?

 

[Rubin]

Another take on the "investment" feature is growing forests. Tile output and benefits (could be linked to infrastructure investment) from forests increase as forests mature.

There isn't really any "investment protection" in this idea, but it could maybe lead to more options in infrastructure (including terraforming) planning.

I think "cottage spamming" in Civ4 is a very unfortunate consequence of the "cottage" feature.

 

[GeoModder]

One thing that comes to mind here is the heavily reliance upon automation that colonists do upon arrival on a virgin planet: they don't have the manpower to build stuff so would need a sort of self-replicating/automated mechanisms to increase yields over time.
For instance, an automated robot that starts churning out solar panels on a plot, and every number of turns it has produced enough new panels as to increase the energy income of this plot. Same for mines, this robot churns out harvesting drones that increase the yield of the mine over time (when worked at least, which represents a specialist in the base in his cosy control room keeping an eye on things).

 

[Wodan]

I'm not sure cottages as such appeals to me, personally. Especially on a new planet with hostile native life, you're simply not going to see "suburbs". The concept doesn't fit with the SMAC paradigm.

The game mechanic, however, could still work. Rubin mentioned growing forests. One of the big features of Planetfall should be the two different main strategies of the colonists: terraforming vs adapting. For terraforming you research techs that make your territory more like Earth... your plants grow faster, have a higher survival rate, etc. For adapting, you research techs that enable you to better understand, life with, and make food out of the native plants and wildlife.

Anyway, back to Rubin's thought about growing forests. Trees and wood would be a valuable commodity. People would probably value wooden furniture greatly... a stack of lumber would be worth a lot of money. So, what better to do in an enemy's territory if he decides to simply retreat into his habitats? Chop down those forests he has spent years and years growing. Cart the wood back home. This would either take a former or a crawler (I like the latter idea).

The automated solar panel extruder idea has some merit too. Especially if it costs you money to generate them. Say, 5 energy to make another panel. Each turn, each panel generates 1 energy. So, on turn 5 you have spent 25 energy and have 5 panels generating 5 energy / turn, and have a ROI of 10 energy so far. (There should be some upper limit on # of panels per tile.) Pretty soon you'll break even, and start to show a profit. The more turns they run, the more you make. Until that enemy comes along and rips up all those panels....

Wodan

 

[woodelf]

Can you have 2 cottage mechanisms running at once?

I really like the solar panels, but the forests could be cool as well. Almost like planting a resource that can be removed.

 

[GeoModder]

I wouldn't see why not. It's a similar (game)mechanism, only the output (energy or hammers) is different.

 

[GRM7584]

I like the idea of making all improvements 'grow' with time to represent automated construction, but I think the time for something to grow should be reduced significantly for everything but forests; forests should take a long time to grow, but once they reach maturity they become unpillagable features instead of improvements. Of course, fungus could still overtake them once they're mature.
Regular improvements, if they use the cottage mechanic, should have only one or two iterations, I think, possibly with the lowest iteration granting no bonuses at all. But, instead of taking 40+ turns to grow the final stage, they would take 5-10 turns per stage, making pillaging a setback for most improvements, but not a game-ruiner.

 

[GeoModder]

Actually, while for a forest it could take longer and longer per stage of yield increase, we could do the opposite for solar panels and mines: Say 15 turns for the first increase, 10 for the second and a mere 5 for the final increase. This simulates that there's more and more surplus robot "creators" to construct new robots.

 

[woodelf]

The first pillage on panels or mines should be eliminating those pesky robots then. I doubt they'd go without a turn long fight!

 

[GeoModder]

Good idea.

 

[woodelf]

And then after the enemy is gone you need to resupply the bots to repair the improvement if it was pillages at all. (Terraformer visit, that's all)

 

[GeoModder]

But that sounds like micro-management. [/gerikes]

 

[GRM7584]

Actually, it does sound like micro to me (unless I've missed sarcasm somewhere along the way). I wouldn't want to have to send formers back out to a pillaged tile unless the improvement was completely annihilated...who programmed those bots to all fight to the death anyway? They aren't military grade, you know. Well, maybe for the Spartans...

 

[woodelf]

Alright, the bots get sent back automatically as you work the tile.

 

[Wodan]

Actually, that's what I thought you meant, woodelf.

 

[woodelf]

Uh, that's what I meant.

Whatever makes the Mod look the best is what I meant.