Request partners; MARS mod

[Smoking mirror]

Well, The first scenario will be nationalist civs. Going to mars in the first place is not a very good economic bet, execpt for a traditional nation. The materials and technology and science generated from such an enterprise can have good returns. For instance at the moment India's space program returns up to 3 times the money spent on it.

Once the martian infrastucture is in place it is likley that much of it would be sold off by the nations states, either after or during settlement. This is where the nations would get the real return on investment.

So the second scenario represents the Transnational corporations atempting to realise thier assets on Mars, while the people living there, perhaps only a few million at this time, attempt to build a martian state.

For the first scenario you would have nation states as the choosable civs, with the transnational presence on mars being represented by goody huts and barbarians. In the second scenario the choosable civs will be a number of transnational corps, and the martian locals, who depending on the result of the first scenario will be either one united nation, or a number of smaller groups.

I've tried to have a variety of different armour and space suit designs so far, as they would most likely be designed and built by diferent transnational corps and then bought by the governments involved. As you probably know this is mostly the way that most western governments deal with projects like this, with some specialist technological equipment being produced by nationalised agencies like NASA, while most of the regular equipment is produced by home grown companies, and tax is collected from the money they make. Later I'm hoping to have a number of UU's for each corporate civ, so that for the scenarios which follow the epic game style there is a good progression of generic units, while those scenarios which have a large number of preplaced units and a fairly short tech tree will have lots of similar tech units with lots of flavour for each civ.

Here is an example of the stealth effect I've been trying out, I'm going to make an early spy type unit for the martians who uses the paramilitary model with some adjustment and a new skin;

 

[Kal-el]

that stealth effect is hot!

 

[Ozymandias]

It's one of the Transnational names from Kim Stanley Robinsons Mars trilogy.
The transnationals are massive amalgams of dozens of differnt multinational companies. As they merge with other peers they pick up long double or tripple bareled names, like "Time-Warner", Eventualy, as these names become too unwieldy, they pick a new name that describes what they are, and hides the massive nature of thier corporate structure. Sometimes it is the name of a small part of the original merger, most often the best known one. For example the stationers Office depot, still use many of the old names which are parts of the companies they have bought up in other counties, such as Guilbert in france, Nice-Day, and Viking Direct.

Some of the companies in KSRs Mars Trilogy are;
Subarashii
Praxis
Marharani (probably a mis-spelling from my memory)
Armscor
Amex
Mitsubishi

Some of these are real companies, and some are perhaps based on real companies, or parent companies. KSR spent 17 years researching his Mars trilogy so I'm asuming he didin't just pick the names out of thin air.

This basically echoes the current Japanese (and IIRC Korean) practice of consortiums of companies being very closely alligned (through mutual stock ownership etc.) into "zaibatsu" and "keretsu".

-Oz

 

[Ozymandias]

VERY nice fade-away effect on the stealth unit!

 

[fe3333au]

Well, The first scenario will be nationalist civs. Going to mars in the first place is not a very good economic bet, execpt for a traditional nation ... For the first scenario you would have nation states as the choosable civs, with the transnational presence on mars being represented by goody huts and barbarians.

I thought that the barbs and goody huts were going to be scattered hardware from the early exporation phase 1970's onwards ... eg. martian rovers, temporary manned mission structures and automatic laboratories.

 

[Smoking mirror]

I thought that the barbs and goody huts were going to be scattered hardware from the early exporation phase 1970's onwards ... eg. martian rovers, temporary manned mission structures and automatic laboratories.

Well some of it will be, but if you think about it much of the space exploration of the next century (at least on the small scale) will be driven by private enterprise. Finding an old rover wouldn't realy benefit your civ too much, but finding a whole corporate mining complex would be a great boost. Though It could cause problems later on if you go around taking over corporate holdings without permission...

Anyway, just posted the riot guard and stealth spy, For the most part they have the same animations as the paramilitary Guard, this helps save a lot of time. The commando unit is going to be very weak but have hidden nationality, while the stealth spy will be stronger (but not as strong as the other units available at that time) and will be invisible and be able to make stealth attacks. The civilian rovers will have special sensor equipment usualy used for prospecting for water or metals so they will be able to detect invisible units, this should stop the stealth spy from being too powerfull as you will be able to use one of the two available rover designs (one will have wheels and the other has tracks) to hunt for enemy stealth units.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Update; I'm probably moving to Leeds in May so I have roughly till the end of April to see what I can get done for the first scenario of the mars mod. After that it'll have to wait until I can aford a new PC (am using my parents at the moment).

The good news is that I've almost completed the infantry line for the first scenario. Just a few vehicles, and bits and bods to do (just realised today I need to make a Sci-fi great leader and army unit for the scenario).
This may actualy spur me on to actualy finishing the scenario.

Here is a preview of the two final standard troopers of the first scenario. They are both light troopers, and have slightly lower stats than some of the earlier units, (especialy where those units are available via a small or great wonder) but at a much better cost efficiency, perhaps as much as 30-50%

The first is the armourshrek;

This is a light anti-armour defender with a good defensive bombard and low cost. It also requires no resources.

The second is a professional soldier, I've not got a good name for this guy yet;

The animations feature a breathing mask and goggles similar to the unit above, but I removed them for the civlopedia pic. They would be fairly cheap with a high attack value and moderate deffense.

Overall for stats defensive units will mostly have a movement of one (with a few exceptions) and the attacking units will have a movement of two but an attack value not much higher than the defenders, the real difference between the two is that attackers will generaly be lighter equiped. This should make assaults a more Strategic, less bloody affair, more like modern combat than the trench warfare of the early 20th century. Experience in your troops will be at a premium when attacking (higher chance of retreat) and the best defense will be to react proactivly. In the first scenario cities will generaly be small with few defensive upgrades so you will need new stratagies for dealing with the AI (Radar stations will be available early, but fortress' will not be available untill much later).

Vehicles will have higher stats but fewer HPs to make them more vunerable to defensive bombards (which will be given out to all rocketlauncher equiped units). They will be best used on the move out on flat ground where infantry will be denied the advantages of terrain and building cover.

I have tested some of these ideas before but not all of them. It remains to be seen how they will all mesh. I want a lot of different troops to be available at around the same time, some being build normaly (usualy just one attacker and one defender though I will try to make it so that an obsolete unit that requires less resources is available as well to represent cities at the edgo of civiliazation) while the others are available through Small wonders.

There will be two main eras, imported earth units will be available from wonders for the first (the establishment phase) and more native type units will be available for the second (the isolationist phase) where support from earth starts to dry up as earth descends in to anarchy as the old nations are replaced as world powers by the transnational corps. The reason for this is simple; The end of Oil.

With Oil as a cheap source of power eventualy coming to an end the great industrial ecconomies of the world finaly flounder, the capitalist era finaly come to an end and the transnationals, with thier great wealth, vast ownership and post-capitalist/ post-industrial organising principles (The holy grail of all modern corporations is a product that costs nothing to produce, and is mostly packaging and brand name, for example the "Big Mac") become a new Semi-feudal governmet for a while.
A new era of expansion will be begun in the second scenario as Fusion Power is finaly realised on a comercial scale, suddenly space seems like a good place to be as corporations start mining the moon for hydrogen (India is already planning on mapping the moons surface for Hydrogen bearing rock) and begin to expand out towards the asteroid belt. They have a lot of energy, but need materials and rare metals, that is where the undiscovered wealth of Mars lies. If only they could get that Orbital elevator idea to work...

 

[Ozymandias]

Your ideas sound extraordinarily well thought out SM

 

[Wyrmshadow]

Actually OZ the Transnationals are the main antagonists in the Mars trilogy books. EXCELENT read.

 

[Ozymandias]

Actually OZ the Transnationals are the main antagonists in the Mars trilogy books. EXCELENT read.

Thanks! I could use a good SF read right about now.

Best,

Oz

 

[Camber]

Smoking mirror,

I've tried out the terrain set you posted here (post#137). I like the textures and colors, they look great. My only concern is the rectilinear look of the hills and mountains. I understand that these form a sort of "plateau" look when combined en masse, with the edge looking sort of like a cliff. But when not massed together, they look very non-organic, like a checkerboard. Would you consider rounding the edges more on the stand-alone tiles, varying the angle of the leading edge more, and making the top surface less flattened on tiles that aren't surrounded on all sides by hills. The boxy look is most pronounced when a hill or mountain is by itself or sticking out from a group, so this is where I would recommend the variations.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Well the terrain is not realy "finished" at the moment. There will be more veriaty in the finished mod. Landmark terrain allows quite a bit of development, I also want the general details to be quite large and chunky in the first mod, as it is going to be very focused in on a small area. Later mods will be "zoomed out" a lot to include much of the whole planet, so I may play around with combining and shrinking bits.

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

I really like what you've done so far Smoke. You may or may not have guessed already, but I am a big fan of your work, starting with you Grenadier unit you made way back which is now an unseparable part of my game.

I'll share some of my ideas regarding my Colony Wars project and how I was going to treat(and probably still will) a Martian-Earth War. Basically, I thought that by the time good size colonies on Mars existed to the extent a War would be possible, Earth would likely be in possession of Inter-solar system Capital Starships. Under this theory, I figured that these ships would likely also possess powerful space-to-surface firepower of some sort. Since its impossible to reproduce that in game, and the Nuke option is clumsy in my opinion, I threw in the idea of Mars having their own small space fleet in orbit stationed on both of Mar's moons(which in my story have been turned into Space Stations). The reasoning being that Earth's fleet is busy confronting the Martian fleet.

However, landing ships do manage to get threw the Martian Blockade, sending a relatively large contigeant of Earth forces to the surface. Basically, in my story, Earth has a political philociphy which finds human casualities in War unexceptable, so rather than a mostly Human army, Earth possesses mostly Report-Controled AI Mecha. When Mars trashes Earth in the war, Earth is forced to send Human battalions to Mars. Eventually though, when Earth develops True Artificial Intelligence, they manage to begin to defeat Mars utterly, however it is to little too late.

How are you going to approach a Martian-Earth war?

 

[Smoking mirror]

I suppose it's all about where you come from and what you belive when it comes to science fiction...
From what I can tell human casualties in the future are going to be come more aceptable, because nationalist armies (with the whole concept of fighting for ones nation and fellow citizens) is going to go by the wayside. You can already see in a limited fashion the sort of thing that will replace it in America's war on drugs in south America. In order to keep the action off the pubic radar and underwraps many of the duties are undertaken by civilian contractors (Such as spraying cocane crops with herbacide, or spotting enemy troops from the air). At the moment it is small scale, but you can already see the results. Those killed in action can expect no army pension for thier loved ones, no military burial, no press coverage or acknowledgement of thier role by thier employers.

In the future I can see more military roles being taken up by mercs and civilian contractors, with the idea that if they die, thats what they get paid so much for so why make a fuss? It's not like they are poorly paid conscripted government troops who are fighting for thier country and expect to recive minimum casualties as part of the bargain that they make with thier leaders.

On the other hand Space ships are not likely to take the form of "battleships" or "cruisers", remember every ounce of cargo or equipment transported between earth and Mars costs a massive amount. Most ships would be little more that cargo with an engine attached. Naval engagements would likely take the form of smart missiles launched from both sides, with ECM (electronic counter measures) and ECCM (electronic counter, counter measures) being used by both sides to stop the missiles from reaching each other. It would be a mainly electronic war, with AI playing a big part. Most military equipment would be inplace around the parent planet, either military space stations or automated satelite defence systems, and the missiles could be launched from either earth or Mars. Eventualy it would reach a point where no side could see the other sides ships and missiles and each would be deploying them blind at the other planet. The Nuclear stand off would mean that firing missiles would be a lose lose situation, just like in the cold war, so combat would be down to stealthed ships carrying small commando forces shuttling back and forth between the two planets. A situation would arise somewhat like that of the two superpowers in the cold war, although mars was behind initialy earth would maybe be reluctant to obliterate them outright early on (the so called "First strike option" which was much touted in the USA at the begining of the cold war, but never carried out). Eventualy it would all be down to "Spy Vs Spy" encounters that would maintain the status quo, while never delivering a fatal blow.

I could imagine this happening after the first martian war, after the decision had been made as to whether Mars would be a soverign state, or a corporate Vassal, so that for the later scenarios most of the action would take place on the surface, and would be most likely of the civil war type, rather than the foreign invasion type.

Oopps, bit of a novel there, didn't mean to go on at such length. Off to Kent now to see a Thin Lizzy tribute band, Yay!

 

[Kal-el]

Just a little something on casualties, their acceptability in the past, the present and thoughts on the future. In past wars, prior to WWII, soldiers were deemed, if not expendable then at least nearly so. This was because the leadership considered themselves to be the elite class while the common foot soldier was just a tool to be used to accomplish the mission. The infantry received very little training and very poor pay, and were for all intents and purposes cannon fodder. The key element here is the lack of training. Because the commanders had so little invested in each soldier, and because they could force just about anybody to fight, it was as if the army had an unlimited supply of bodies to throw at the enemy. It didn't matter if an individual died because there was no capital investment in training. Anybody could fill the role that the recently departed had so recently filled.

Today the amount of money that is put into training a soldier is rediculous. The equipment we use is so intricate that we can't just throw any old monkey into the mix. Each time a soldier is lost, the government loses time and money in training and equipment. For that reason the military leadership is highly averse to wasting its most valuable resource, i.e. manpower. And of course there is the public opinion aspect that SM has already mentioned. However, public opinion will only go so far to sway the generals from action. If a target is of high enough value, then certain losses become "acceptable".

In the future we can expect that the training will become even more in depth, i.e. it will cost more to train each individual soldier. Not only that but the cost of the equipment will continue to increase exponentially. A dead soldier can't bring back that multi-million dollar power suit he's wearing. Losses, far from being more acceptable will become less. Yes, I agree that there will be an increase in "black" ops, in which there is no accountability for the loss of men, however, from a commanders perspective, those SOF units are even more painful to lose. Of course the use of mercenaries makes the loss less painful, however, no commander likes wasting money, and a loss on the battlefield, whether lost by mercs, conscripts or volunteers is still a loss, and is still a decrease in available resources, both monetary and manpower. Additionally, any employer who wastes his mercenary resources is likely to find it more difficult, i.e. more expensive, to hire replacements as the word will spread that the employer does not value the merc's lives. Even if the corporation doesn't value human life, you can be guaranteed that the individual soldiers will continue to put a high value on their own skins.

 

[vbraun]

Hey SM,

Do you think you have any use for something like this as a settler? (maybe the starting one)

 

[Sword_Of_Geddon]

I suppose it's all about where you come from and what you belive when it comes to science fiction...
From what I can tell human casualties in the future are going to be come more aceptable, because nationalist armies (with the whole concept of fighting for ones nation and fellow citizens) is going to go by the wayside. You can already see in a limited fashion the sort of thing that will replace it in America's war on drugs in south America. In order to keep the action off the pubic radar and underwraps many of the duties are undertaken by civilian contractors (Such as spraying cocane crops with herbacide, or spotting enemy troops from the air). At the moment it is small scale, but you can already see the results. Those killed in action can expect no army pension for thier loved ones, no military burial, no press coverage or acknowledgement of thier role by thier employers.

In the future I can see more military roles being taken up by mercs and civilian contractors, with the idea that if they die, thats what they get paid so much for so why make a fuss? It's not like they are poorly paid conscripted government troops who are fighting for thier country and expect to recive minimum casualties as part of the bargain that they make with thier leaders.

On the other hand Space ships are not likely to take the form of "battleships" or "cruisers", remember every ounce of cargo or equipment transported between earth and Mars costs a massive amount. Most ships would be little more that cargo with an engine attached. Naval engagements would likely take the form of smart missiles launched from both sides, with ECM (electronic counter measures) and ECCM (electronic counter, counter measures) being used by both sides to stop the missiles from reaching each other. It would be a mainly electronic war, with AI playing a big part. Most military equipment would be inplace around the parent planet, either military space stations or automated satelite defence systems, and the missiles could be launched from either earth or Mars. Eventualy it would reach a point where no side could see the other sides ships and missiles and each would be deploying them blind at the other planet. The Nuclear stand off would mean that firing missiles would be a lose lose situation, just like in the cold war, so combat would be down to stealthed ships carrying small commando forces shuttling back and forth between the two planets. A situation would arise somewhat like that of the two superpowers in the cold war, although mars was behind initialy earth would maybe be reluctant to obliterate them outright early on (the so called "First strike option" which was much touted in the USA at the begining of the cold war, but never carried out). Eventualy it would all be down to "Spy Vs Spy" encounters that would maintain the status quo, while never delivering a fatal blow.

I could imagine this happening after the first martian war, after the decision had been made as to whether Mars would be a soverign state, or a corporate Vassal, so that for the later scenarios most of the action would take place on the surface, and would be most likely of the civil war type, rather than the foreign invasion type.

Oopps, bit of a novel there, didn't mean to go on at such length. Off to Kent now to see a Thin Lizzy tribute band, Yay!

Well, in my reasoning, with current levels of technology you would never get Space Battleships. In my little Colony Wars universe, the Capital Starship was made possible by 1. New Spacebuilding techniques... 2. The invention of artificial gravity, which led to the development of 3. The Space-Jump Drive, which allows a ship to replecate the sling-shot theory by using gravity to acceive tremendious sublight speeds.

Your scenerio has corporations gaining equal, if not greater power than the Governments of the world. Mine has the opposite. In this scenerio, after a World War between Russia and the EU(where the US gets anniliated with Nuclear weapons), the UN takes over as the last standing government body in the western world. One of the things that they do is eliminate what they feel is the causes of war, greed and nationalism. So basically, all corporations are disolves and their wealth is seized by the UN. The UN fights one last world war against the China-led coalition and other remaining independent nations, and after defeating them, dissolves all national borders. With unlimited resources and funding, by the time of the first Colony War, Earth is in posession of semi-autonominus AI powered units, without the need for extensive human supervision.

I'm not as much interested in realism as I am on fun though..why let reality interfere I say.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Hey SM,

Do you think you have any use for something like this as a settler? (maybe the starting one)

Looks cool Vbraun, I'd make a good parradrop animation for a settler, or for any other unit for that matter. I'd be fun to maybe add the parradrop ability to all units, though you'd still need an airbase or airport improvement to use the ability (I liked it in Civ II where you could paradrop from any city).

Kal-el; I agree on the idea that it's always going to be unaceptable to military leadership to lose highlytrained men and military equipment. However thats where Mercs are usefull, most mercs today have already received military training serving in a nationalist army and are armed with cheap secondhand army surplus. The mercs in the scenario are going to be cheap with a fairly good attack, but a low defence & less HPs (they have a tendancy to give up or run away if they loose the initiative). With only one movement point they will also be less able to maintain a coherent fighting force after being defeated (no retreat bonus).

 

[dsquared]

Hey

I have been wanting to work on a near future lunar exploration mod for civ3 and found your thread. It looks pretty damn exciting and its nice that you want to stay away from too much sci fi type stuff. It's more exciting in my opinion if it is actually possible and that is really what made civ3 a great game.

Anyways, do you have a list of stuff that needs to be done and has been done up to now? That would be pretty helpful for people that want to help out.

It would be cool to acknowledge that at the point we are settling mars we will already have substantial lunar/asteroid infrastructure. Perhaps the moon is it's own sovereign planet and is setting up on mars as well or comes to the aid of the martians in their quest for freedom as the moon did earlier?? Or the moon (a major resource for earth) sympathizes with the martians and revolts as well. I dunno the exact history you have working right now.

Anyways if you have a list of crap that needs doing post it and update it to streamline the mod process.

If I can help you out on any of them I will.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Yeah, I think I may include the Lunar federation in a later scenario.
I'll probably do a list soon, but most of the stuff on the list is already being done by me. I've still yet to get hold of a new copy of conquests so I cant begin the actual putting together of the mod yet, but that will probably be the biggest hurdle.
There are already lots of things done. Tech icons are still a little thin but Its difficult for anyone to do more before we have an idea of how the tech tree will be structured, and I can't know that untill I have finished and tested most of the units.

gonna post some planes today, depending on how things go...