Request partners; MARS mod

How easy should it be to live on mars?

  • Easy (A bit like living in Russia)

    Votes: 4 6.3%
  • Fairly difficult (like living at the north pole)

    Votes: 29 46.0%
  • Very difficult (Almost like trying to live on the moon)

    Votes: 30 47.6%

  • Total voters
    63
Well, I don't know what it is like in the rest of the world, but where I live it is very rare to see CIV III or any of it's add ons in the shops. It took me several months to get conquests originaly and even then it took a 150 mile journey to find a shop that stocked it.

I guess i could order it or somthing, but it's just not something I ever get around to. I have the original CIV III and play the world, so I can still play CIv III and make new units, I just can't make a new scenario. :(

I'm also trying to save money at the moment and I can't realy aford it.
I'll get around to it eventualy.

Meanwhile the units are being made, I'll soon have enough to make the scenario... :)
 
SM, I have a suggestion for your Mars-jet. Are you familiar with Chesley Bonestall's artwork that was featured in Collier's Magazine in the early 1950's? In essence it was a rocket body (much like a V-2) attached to very long, very thin delta wings.

Yes it's very retro but still nice.
m1c.jpg

v4.jpg

Spacetug.jpg

m3.jpg
 
Cool, those long wings are exactly what you'd need to stay in the air on Mars. I was originaly thinking of a longer, thinner plane, but I think that'd work well fro the Solid booster craft, while this design would be good for the liquid rocket engine craft.

I've just played half way through a game of Civ III using Play the world... It's been a while since I played Civ III and although I love the game, I still can't help but see loads of things I hate about it. :(
I think we're going to have to really go to work on the game dynamics. There's so much that need changing as much as possible. The main thing I want is choice, and tactical challenge.

Here are some things I hate;
Same size cities for much of the game there is no difference in the size of the cities. They are either growing or at thier limit. The actual growth period is quite short especialy during the middle ages. In this scenario I want an intitial cap on city growth, You will need a water processing plant to grow above size 1, but once you do the improvement needed to grow above metropolis will need a fair investment in materials but will be available from the start. The only limiting factor on city growth will be the terrain and resources in the city radiaus, so you will see a number of different city sizes, from very low in unsuitable areas (1-3) to very high where conditions are favourable(8-16).
The power generator that allows growth to metropolis level will have the "replaces all improvements with this flag" tag and will come in a veriaty of flavours, becoming better with available techs and resources. Low tech generators (nuke plant, hydrogen peroxide plant) will have drawbacks such as unhappy faces and high maintenace costs.
Inflexible governments It shouldn't be nececcary to change governments so much, in real life changes of government are rare.
I'm going to remove the ability to make quick gov changes from all civs, and provide more extreme government choices. You will have a very peacefull gov, with very high unit maintenance, A very warlike government and a middling gove, which is not very good at either, but does leave you prepared for sneak attacks without having to go all out for attack. Each govenement will come in a small empire version and large empire version, so six all together. All will be available from early on, and will have gov specific buildings to imporve them with better techs.
No military strategy challenges Got lots of ideas for this one already. :)
Wonders are too powerfull! Civ III always has a big problem with runaway posative feedback and wonders make this even worse! Who ever builds the piramids has a much greater chance of building any other wonder, the same with the sistene chapel. Adam smiths Trading company is also just stupidly powerfull. There will be wonders in the scenario but they won't be over powerfull, mostly they will just spawn extra units and give tech and trade bonus.
Units are too cheap Lots of units makes the game too complicated and slows it down. There will be a range of units, some cheap and fairly weak (good for military minded civs) and some very expensive and good (good for governments with high maintenance). However nearly all of them will be quite expensive compared to traditional civ.

Does anyone have any pet hates? Also any good ways of combating them?
 
That plane has inspired me.

Maybe when I get done with the plane I'm working on now I can just make the model and use the same kind of animations from the previous one.
 
My pet hate is the horde of obsolete units you see when the AI invades you. The only way I know of to avoid this would be to make an AoE-style unit progression, so that each unit in a certain line costs only slightly more than the last, but you have to research a special (optional?) tech to build it. I don't know if the AI would go for the optional techs until later, but if so it should work ok. The result is that after the large initial investment to develop the technology, upgrading the now obsolete units would be fairly cheap. IMO this is more believable in a scenario like this, where soldiers would be given an upgraded weapon or new armor instead of completely replacing the entire unit with a new concept.
 
Hey, I've been playing Pentagenesis lately, and it's got me wanting to play some other sci-fi mods. I'm sorry to say I have no experience modding, so I can't really help out, but I still wanted to show my support. I read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy quite a few years ago so I don't remember too much of it, but I'm still intrigued.

And if no one minds my dragging up old issues you've already discussed, here's the opinion of an engineering student on some of the choices you've made so far.

Non-Self-Contained Suits: In a non-terraformed environment, I think a suit would have to be fully closed and not exposed to the ambient conditions, temperature notwithstanding. I'm no doctor, but if we assume that the inside of your body is pressurized at 1 (Earth) atmosphere, and the outside is only 0.1 atm, then the pressure imbalance would cause swelling, which will probably be undesirable.

Angular Helmets: As above, pressure imbalances cause forces and stresses to be developed in the helmet. Round helmets are actually safer because they have none of the stress concentrations exprienced by sharp corners and abrupt changes in form.

Atmospheric Flight: Atmosphere on Mars is thinner, but is it also less dense? Lift does indeed depend on wing surface area, but the "air" on Mars may actually be denser than Earth, thereby allowing more lift. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is denser than nitrogen (N2) which comprises 70% of Earth's atmosphere. Not to mention the low temperature, which tends to increase density.

Anyway, hope the science helps, and good luck on your mod!
 
Leet911: Martian air pressure is about the same as about 70-100 thousandft on earth, very thin.

EDIT: forgot the thousands of feet.
 
I hate the rail system

Could you perhaps have a transport unit that has very high movement ... but can only travel on roads ... that way you can move units about faster but not at the ridiculous infinite rate as with civ rail ...
 
Well, you can set the move rate along roads... If you set it at four or five say, it's allow very high move rates. dunno If I want to do that though, it'll have to be tried out in the playtesting. :)
 
Well at least for the first scenario I'm assuming that all units, even the infantry ones include a transport rover or whatever. You couldn't realy walk very far on mars, and the distances involved in exploration and prospecting would be vast...
 
LeeT911 said:
Atmospheric Flight: Atmosphere on Mars is thinner, but is it also less dense? Lift does indeed depend on wing surface area, but the "air" on Mars may actually be denser than Earth, thereby allowing more lift. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is denser than nitrogen (N2) which comprises 70% of Earth's atmosphere. Not to mention the low temperature, which tends to increase density.

Anyway, hope the science helps, and good luck on your mod!

Well, I thought this mod is going to be based on the trilogy Red, green and blue Mars so we don't have to go guessing about which equipment is used. Kim Stanley Robinsson did his homework before writing the books. He is incidentaly chairman of the martian society whose goal it is to move there for real.

In the book people fly around in derigibles, (airships, like Hindenburg). It's not until fairly late in the books that the atmosphere is dense enough to allow for anything more advanced.

...and in the books. The main hastle isn't air presure, (the need for heavy duty preasure suits) but it's the cold. Even at the start of the first book, they go out with only preasure protection for the head. But the preasure suits that have been made allready are cool, so I vote to stick with em.

When the guy Boon gets assasinated, (by tearing his suit?) there is a a very graphic description of his skin going slowly blue, then black. It's not at all like his brains get sucked out through the hole. He even tries to get back even with parts of his body freezing.

Great work so far, but any plans on doing martians. Human looking but very tall and thin?
 
Smoking mirror said:
Well at least for the first scenario I'm assuming that all units, even the infantry ones include a transport rover or whatever. You couldn't realy walk very far on mars, and the distances involved in exploration and prospecting would be vast...
So are you going to have land transport units then? ... I miss the transporters in Civ 2 ... load them with infantry ... move ... move ... unload for battle ... :D
 
drzoidberg: There are two atempts on Boones life, when his suit is ripped in the first one he is able to get back to a habitat and cut his way through the tent wall before the cold and low pressure have time to kill him. Later he is suffocated inside a greenhouse...
Generaly if the suit tears or is ripped open you have a good chance of losing a limb through pressure bruising and frost bite if you're not able to get back to a habitat or rover quick enough. However if your face plate cracks or your helmet is damaged you'd probably have a pretty unplesant death like in "Total Recal".

fe3333au; I'd love to have land transport units, but the AI won't use them. :(
The way 9it works in the scenario is that you imagine that all infantry units are mechanised infantry, but equiped with only civilian vehicles slightly modified for military use. Units with light gear and equipment will be able to move quickly because it takes little time to load and unload thier gear. This makes them good for attacking. Units with heavy gear need lots of ammo and equipment which takes a long time to load in to their vehicles and they generaly use larger, slower vehicles to move about. These units are better suited to deffensive roles.

Some vehicles will be represented individualy, those with special weapons or armour or special roles (like scout rovers or tanks), but these will not include infantry in thier formations and so will need infantry support from other units.

It seems complicated, but once you start to play it, you'll soon get the hang of it.
 
@Smoking Mirror - your explaination was succinct (and illustrates the bane of all modders the AI) ... your description makes perfect sense ...
 
I had been looking for this pic on my HDD for a while and I finally found it. Maybe this could give you an idea for a nice space warrior for your mod.
 
Looks pretty cool, I'm moving to Leeds tommorrow, So I have to begin work on the mod all over again (I'm thinking of switching to blender or 3ds max, so may take a while to get in to the swing of things, but I imagine he'd make a good place to start... :)
 
Back
Top Bottom