Rallying call for all interested: Colonisation of the Moon mod!

[GeoModder]

Oh crap, there goes my preliminary tech rewrite then. I had simply scrapped Duricrete and Air purification. The first for was said it couldn't happen on the Moon, and the second I simply thought to be incorporated in Lunar Basics.

Oh well, I just post what I got.

How do you guys feel about this:
Units do -1 health in bases (stresses environmental systems)
doing other way around with open borders? Closed borders allowed with Chartra Selene?
Can it be made that a resource gives the benefit when connected to a base, but not improved (yet)?

 

[Belizan]

Ugh. Double crappy bad news. First I find out that although we do have DSL in my rural, hick area there is no more "space" available now. I guess someone needs to die, move, or drop DSL. Death right now is my best bet. Secondly I was just uploading the mod at Fielgone via dial-up and the damn page refreshed and I can't find the link they give at the end of the completed upload. Simply beautiful....

:/

(translation: That sucks.)
(Translation added to defeat the 10 character minimum posting limit)
(Thank you for your support...)

 

[Belizan]

Oh crap, there goes my preliminary tech rewrite then. I had simply scrapped Duricrete and Air purification. The first for was said it couldn't happen on the Moon, and the second I simply thought to be incorporated in Lunar Basics.

Oh well, I just post what I got.

How do you guys feel about this:
Units do -1 health in bases (stresses environmental systems)
doing other way around with open borders? Closed borders allowed with Chartra Selene?
Can it be made that a resource gives the benefit when connected to a base, but not improved (yet)?

Let's see...
So, I don't really like unit generated unhealthiness, to be honest. It fails my "fun" test. Also, it's problematic since there is a scale to units which would have to be explicitly mapped and somehow displayed and tallied and it winds up becoming rather a lot of work for a feature which probably everyone will love to hate.

As for reversing the border agreements, it can be cludged, but I don't really see the point. At the point where we have cultural zones as power grids with security cameras, anyone entering your cultural zone is clearly trespassing. It hardly takes a tech to say that if you trespass on my territory that's a declaration of war. Not given the global nature of private property laws, and the implied message behind the chain link fense 8). Damn, it would be cool to put up a chain link fense around the cultural border of a nation. Wonder if we can get someone to make a river that looks like a chain link fense? Yum...

As for the resources, I'm not sure which resource you had in mind for this. Depending on that, I'm not sure why you would get access to a resource you haven't set up to exploit yet :/. Anyway, I think it can be done, but depending on the rules it may be both a pain to code and rather slow. What were you thinking here?

 

[GeoModder]

For the last, I was thinking of ALL resources.
Linking the resource plot to your base gives only the benefit (health, happiness,...), putting a mine/extractor/whatever else on it gives the surplus the given improvement provides.

 

[Belizan]

Warsong is onboard. He made a lot of CYA caveats about how realistic some of the techs he'll propose are, or how likely they are to be disproven in the next few years, but... Hell, sounds good to me. He and I are hammering out details, broad concepts, etc. now. So if folks would like to restate their opinions on the overall scope, the eras, the general feel of the mod, now would be a good time. Some issues he's brought up remind me of things I asked JBG back in Janurary. Why don't people have nukes? Why don't they use them. I have some ideas, like after WWIII (nearly? by option) destroys the Earth about when nukes come available a wonder gets introduced that represents a warm and fuzzy lunar NPT where humanity learns from it's mistakes. If we have some sort of Lunies option, one Lunie cult might be ought to blow up the moon. Etc. Moving on, Any ideas people have for loss of contact should be suggested now. I'm currently evangelizing WWIII. Although I think a number of options could exist, chosen at random of combined via map options at the start (Like some sort of super plague, for instance, or for the truely silly among us, a zombie plague 8).

Anyway, thoughts?

 

[Belizan]

For the last, I was thinking of ALL resources.
Linking the resource plot to your base gives only the benefit (health, happiness,...), putting a mine/extractor/whatever else on it gives the surplus the given improvement provides.

Ok, but why?

 

[GeoModder]

Because that way your civ can have access to a resource while the improvement is perhaps still not buildable. Could be handy for the early game, for instance with water ice, carbon ice and such. Those are volatiles almost required for everything (atmosphere, fuel,...) on the moon, should be among the first to be hunted for and they can't be mined for several decades because they're later in the techtree.

 

[woodelf]

Oh crap, there goes my preliminary tech rewrite then. I had simply scrapped Duricrete and Air purification. The first for was said it couldn't happen on the Moon, and the second I simply thought to be incorporated in Lunar Basics.

Oh well, I just post what I got.

How do you guys feel about this:
Units do -1 health in bases (stresses environmental systems)
doing other way around with open borders? Closed borders allowed with Chartra Selene?
Can it be made that a resource gives the benefit when connected to a base, but not improved (yet)?

Looks good so far Geo. Minor changes that Belizan's friend might have are fine. If we get 2, 3, or 4 tech trees to choose from we're better off. Then we can pick and choose what makes the most sense.

I'm with Belizan about -1 health. Realism might hinder fun.

 

[woodelf]

Loss of contact could be from WWIII which is fine by me. Anything else wouldn't be instantaneous. I could see some sort of plague, but people would then be fleeing to the moon and then the Lunar colonies would have to repel them.

I'd really like the eras to be very clearly defined ASAP. That will seriously help us with what techs, buildings, units, ideologies, ect go where. What have we agreed upon? We can have 100 eras and they can be tiny or we can have 4-6 normal sized ones. Also, are we sticking with the 3 tech trees for each type of leader? And are we sticking with JBG's civs? I do want to redo the civics...

 

[Belizan]

Because that way your civ can have access to a resource while the improvement is perhaps still not buildable. Could be handy for the early game, for instance with water ice, carbon ice and such. Those are volatiles almost required for everything (atmosphere, fuel,...) on the moon, should be among the first to be hunted for and they can't be mined for several decades because they're later in the techtree.

Well then perhaps we should take them out of the tech tree, or use other construction reasoning (like kits from earth). It doesn't really make sense to me that you can get the benefit of a resource before you've setup the infrastructure necessary to harvest it.

 

[Belizan]

We'll be working on era ideas. You have any suggestions?

As for the factions, I actually rather liked JBG's civs and factions. You'll note I used them in Lunacy as well. The civics are not so great, although I like the ideas behind the special powers and charter civics. I think for charter civics, though, we might want to make it a category of faction specific civic options (which I can code, FYI). That way, minimally we can make Independence a charter civic and tailor it to look different for the three factions, and if we come up with interesting civic ideas for a specific faction we can try to include it in that category.

I would say this 8). Don't rush a miracle worker, you get rotten miracles 8).

BTW, that was part of the idea with the plague. Nice way to get barbarians, eh?

 

[Belizan]

BTW, Woodelf, how is that collection of past suggestions coming?

 

[woodelf]

Well then perhaps we should take them out of the tech tree, or use other construction reasoning (like kits from earth). It doesn't really make sense to me that you can get the benefit of a resource before you've setup the infrastructure necessary to harvest it.

What about getting a road to a resource somehow reduces the cost of the tech needed to harvest it (when you can get to that tech)? Is this possible? Or maybe somehow having the road allow the tech to be researched out of turn?

 

[woodelf]

BTW, Woodelf, how is that collection of past suggestions coming?

About as quickly as that flowchart.

I have tons of buildings, Wonders, and the religions/ideologies printed out. Nothing in a file though. Do you need them before the tech tree or can we add them later?

 

[woodelf]

Eras: Same as we've written before

Colonization - might be small to keep the game fun
Isolation/Survival - could be long and very fun!
need something here
Expansion
Return to Space?
?????

We need to define the overall scope before we can figure out the last few eras. How is this mod "won"? Building a spacecraft? Conquering the Moon?

 

[GeoModder]

What about getting a road to a resource somehow reduces the cost of the tech needed to harvest it (when you can get to that tech)? Is this possible? Or maybe somehow having the road allow the tech to be researched out of turn?

Nah, would be too gray I think. Better or to let it be usable by mere road/track connection, or with improvements.

Improvement connected it stays then. I redraw the proposal.

The factions are good enough in my opinion too. Civics could do an overhaul, I feel they could be made simpler.

 

[GeoModder]

Colonization
Isolation/Survival
Renaissance/Illumination
Discovery (of distant horizons, wether it be the other planets/moons, the stars or microcosm I let in the middle )

And as victory conditions I would keep Space, Dominance and Unification. Of course, good ol' Transcendence is an option as well.

 

[woodelf]

How do we feel about microorganisms? Personally when I made the Friends of Selene Ideology I based them on getting taken over by something microscopic from the Algae Farms. I don't want full fledged aliens, but I'm not against something living on the Moon, even if it's tinsy.

Civics:

We have the Charter ones. We need a column for Ideology. We'll need Economic, Education, War/Peace. What else?

 

[Belizan]

About as quickly as that flowchart.

I have tons of buildings, Wonders, and the religions/ideologies printed out. Nothing in a file though. Do you need them before the tech tree or can we add them later?

Yeah, it's kinda part of the idea of going over all our ideas and taking the best ones when designing the tree, otherwise we wind up with the same sort of hodge podge we have now.

BTW, you should expect that it will take Warsong and I a few weeks to hammer out a new tech tree.

Keep the ideas coming!

 

[Belizan]

How do we feel about microorganisms? Personally when I made the Friends of Selene Ideology I based them on getting taken over by something microscopic from the Algae Farms. I don't want full fledged aliens, but I'm not against something living on the Moon, even if it's tinsy.

Civics:

We have the Charter ones. We need a column for Ideology. We'll need Economic, Education, War/Peace. What else?

Government is important. Foreign policy might be important too.