Space Colonization modmod

[Thunderbrd]

I've found also that if you take over the world and get to the Galactic Era, then funny things start happening with gold and research, as though some kind of overflow bug is being triggered. I don't think it's my fault, except insofar as I added more content to get into overflow territory, and I don't know what to do about it or if some kind of computational bug is causing you problems.

That's exactly what is happening. When you exceed a particular number you basically have an irrecoverably bugged game. It will infect a lot more than just gold and research.

I'm going to have to take some time soon to work on solving this issue... or get some help with it perhaps.

 

[Shadowclaw]

Also, I know, it is very minor thing, but... We have Information tab and there Demographics tab, where I can see My Approval rate, GDP etc. And there is "Life expectancy" column. I think, now number in that column depends of your "cities healthiness". Is it possible to change that number after some tech? Because, it is very funny, when it says "Life expectancy - 75" after Immortality tech
Also, Population column there is bugged (overflow, I think). It stacks after reaching population nearly 2 billion people (I can write exact number later today).

As for "gold and research" problem, I had that bug. I lost all my gold.

 

[TrippedOnACloud]

Yes, population in the demographic statistics caps at the 32-bit signed integer limit of 2,147,483,647 (2^32-1). It's actually extremely easy to hit this limit, because of the way population is calculated, but unlike when gold, research, or maybe culture overflow, it doesn't break anything and just caps there. I've had single cities hit a population of 2 billion and change, let alone my entire nation.

 

[tmv]

Not that it matters much, but why are things like population realized by a signed integer anyway? I know that this was a Firaxis decision, but does anyone know the reason?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Also, I know, it is very minor thing, but... We have Information tab and there Demographics tab, where I can see My Approval rate, GDP etc. And there is "Life expectancy" column. I think, now number in that column depends of your "cities healthiness". Is it possible to change that number after some tech? Because, it is very funny, when it says "Life expectancy - 75" after Immortality tech

I think this is a measurement of nationwide health vs unhealth. It probably needs to be reframed somehow for c2c.

Also, Population column there is bugged (overflow, I think). It stacks after reaching population nearly 2 billion people (I can write exact number later today).

This is actually something I would like to restructure a bit anyhow. I don't think the population numbers per city pop count are appropriate measurements for C2C to begin with.

Not that it matters much, but why are things like population realized by a signed integer anyway? I know that this was a Firaxis decision, but does anyone know the reason?

Signed increases the limit a bit as it cuts off any room for negative numbers. A signed variable is simply a variable that cannot be negative. There are numerous ways to overcome an overflow but ALL of them can again hit an overflow limit and require yet another method to address. So how you address an overflow is largely a matter of what kind of number limits you really expect to require. In the case of gold and research and such, it's going to be tremendously difficult to overcome our limits but we're going to have to if we want to outgrow the extent of single planetary civilizations.

 

[tmv]

Signed increases the limit a bit as it cuts off any room for negative numbers.

Sorry for nitpicking but that's unsigned. And it seems Firaxis really used signed integers. Of course, they obviously didn't take huge mods into consideration, but it still seems to be a strange decision, considering you cannot go into debt (regarding money), and the population certainly cannot go negative.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Sorry for nitpicking but that's unsigned. And it seems Firaxis really used signed integers. Of course, they obviously didn't take huge mods into consideration, but it still seems to be a strange decision, considering you cannot go into debt (regarding money), and the population certainly cannot go negative.

Ah... sorry you are right. Not nitpicking at all... I should have realized the difference. Generally speaking if you aren't using UNsigned, you wouldn't bother to designate thus my confusion there.

And I think that's what it comes down to... the idea that the memory storage would become so challenged was never built into consideration in the programming. They were working with unimaginably expanded new memory territory at the time and couldn't conceive of the limits being reached thus were more concerned with shaving a little time by not specifying unsigned on their integers. To do so also sometimes enforces conversions at unexpected junctures so I think by habit they just used the standard int for every # variable.

We could probably save a lot of memory space by going through and tediously determining what variables could be unsigned from those that are signed. But I cannot imagine a more boring task.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Here's something the future tech tree should be considering, particularly considering the recent Podesta hacks strongly point to there being contact with an ETI species looking to share this technology with us so long as we can maintain peace...
Zero Point Energy
Sounds like one path of future we may have ahead of us is to be employing this as a replacement for most forms of current energy generation, and could be tapping a tremendous amount of energy in so doing.

 

[pepper2000]

We do have the Quantum Vacuum Power Plant at Controlled Vacuum Collapse, near the end of the tree. I think that's the same basic idea of mining the vacuum potential for usable energy. Like other things in the late Galactic Era, we are getting deep into the realm of speculative physics. Zero Point Energy has a bad reputation because there is a history of fraudulent claims, but based on known science it is at least theoretically possible.

 

[c84]

hello i look foward to playing caveman to cosmos once i can actually get a functional working game. I ma currious, is there going to be alien rivals inn the galactic era or once you defeat all the human civs in this mod mod?

 

[pepper2000]

hello i look foward to playing caveman to cosmos once i can actually get a functional working game. I ma currious, is there going to be alien rivals inn the galactic era or once you defeat all the human civs in this mod mod?

Hi c84. Caveman 2 Cosmos is a lot of fun and I'm sure you'll drop many hours on it.

I've thought about how alien civs would work. In the ideal game, there would be "barbarian" civs that would emerge on the Moon, Mars, and other Solar System areas that are built by stateless humans who leave Earth, maybe your own oppressive regime. Then in interstellar/intergalactic space, there would be advanced civilizations as rivals. I'd love to see all that, but I haven't investigated how the programming would work and I imagine it would be quite difficult. So for now, off-planet terrain is yours for the taking, and this modmod is much more for the builder type player.

 

[pepper2000]

I'm still plugging away on V7 and still want to have 3+ new pieces of content at every future tech. I'm fishing for ideas. The following techs still need content to meet the goal.

- Anti-Aging Medicine
- Artificial Evolution
- Dystopia Pathogens
- Planetary Economics
- Replacement Organs

- Galactic Warfare
- Nanotroids
- Phasing
- Planet Scanning
- Weaponized Antimatter
- Weaponized Gravity Fields
- Wormhole Communications

Some of them will get military units and don't need more buildings

 

[tmv]

What about new Warlord ranks? Although you would have to change the Warlord / Great Commander as well regarding upgrades, but there should be at least two new ranks (for TH and Galactic respectively).

Wormhole Communications should be the starting point for Interstellar Empires. Before that, the solar systems would be almost completely independent (like city states in Ancient), so there should be a new civic where the country can act as a cohesive unit if everyone is willing (economic and military bonus but very sensitive to unhappiness and (with Revolutions) with a stability penalty) - forced unity comes later, when fleets can travel quickly. There also should be a minor economic boost, perhaps connected to the Commercial Spaceport.

Another possible source of ideas is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale - I think Planetary Economics is pretty much the advent of Type I.

 

[pepper2000]

What about new Warlord ranks? Although you would have to change the Warlord / Great Commander as well regarding upgrades, but there should be at least two new ranks (for TH and Galactic respectively).

Good idea. I'm thinking of tentatively placing new ones at Military Robotics, Galactic Warfare, and possibly another one somewhere in between.

Wormhole Communications should be the starting point for Interstellar Empires. Before that, the solar systems would be almost completely independent (like city states in Ancient), so there should be a new civic where the country can act as a cohesive unit if everyone is willing (economic and military bonus but very sensitive to unhappiness and (with Revolutions) with a stability penalty) - forced unity comes later, when fleets can travel quickly. There also should be a minor economic boost, perhaps connected to the Commercial Spaceport.

That makes sense. If nothing else, I'm thinking I'll add an administrative building that makes the "city" into a real part of the empire rather than a distant outpost. I'll have to review the civic situation, though since Wormhole Communications leads directly to Galactic Federation, the latter would be the more logical place to put a new civic.

 

[tmv]

Would new armor materials lead to a renaissance of castles in the form of a heavily defended position around the seat of power? While this would need a heavy adaptation due to air force, nukes (in both cases strong Anti-air units/towers or something like that, SDI or missile defense), far-reaching artillery, especially rocket artillery (artillery on the defender's side and again, missile defense), a much higher precision in firing (flatter structures than in Medieval, like bunkers; everything a bit more stretched out, covering a larger area), this might actually work. Throw in drones and (later on) military robots, and this could make a nice challenge.

I know that there are stronger walls in TH already, but this would be much more reactive instead of just passive, and much more expensive both in construction and in maintenance. Nevertheless, at least for protecting the "palace", it might still be a good idea and like with castles, you could make strong walls (in this case Superstrong and / or Megastrong Alloy Walls) a prerequisite.

For the attacker's side, there would be a need for something that isn't that easy to defend against. A weapon type that could take that role would be lasers. While it is hard today to use a laser strong enough to work as a weapon, in TH that problem can likely be solved (you might still need a small power plant, but you use this like a siege engine in medieval, not as a battlefield weapon). Missile defense does nothing to lasers, and armor can only withstand laser for a time (until the material is heated beyond what it can take). In theory there is no upper power limit for a laser, even a death-star like laser ray is, once produced, perfectly possible. So now there would be strong defenses and an attacker unit that can take them out (given enough time), so the defender now has to counter-attack the lasers. And we would have a "killer application" for weapon-grade lasers that could lead (later on) to smaller lasers.

 

[pepper2000]

That's an interesting concept. There are a lot of places in the future eras where strong defenses come into play: Shielding and Advanced Shielding, Metamaterials, Smart Dust, Superstrong Alloys, Megastrong Alloys, Weaponized Lasers and Photon Thermodynamics (lasers for defense). I like the idea of developing the line of buildings based on Arcology, which I think is the closest future equivalent of the Castle we have.

There is little combat to speak of in space, but similar things could eventually be done around Orbital Megastructures, Lunar Megastructures, Planetary Megastructures, and Astroengineering.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Hydro and I had some deep discussions on the topic of weapon systems and what they mean and where we were going with a lot of these things in the Naval Review thread.

For the attacker's side, there would be a need for something that isn't that easy to defend against.

Stretching into and throughout and beyond the transhuman era, there are quite a few steps where offensive technologies take a step forward and defensive techs take steps forward, one responding to the next in the same kind of technological struggle to achieve an edge that has been taking place since pure biological evolution invented the concept between competing species. Each step of the way was plotted out for game timing and is expressed in the design of the tech tree.

What you will see, when it's more fully implemented, is a huge proliferation in the WAYS that weapons work past the modern era. We're starting to see this trend happening now, with microwave and sonic beams and lasers being employed in modern next generation weaponry, most of which is technically considered 'non-lethal' but could be used in lethal applications as well. The transhuman era imagines yet more inventions which open up new weapons, frost beams, sonic telekinetics, even technological and biological based telepathy and telepathic attack forms. Entering into the galactic eras it gets truly horrific with disintegration rays, gravity control, and flat out reality reprogramming (consider the physics of reality itself to be another program that can be tampered with.) After a point, defensively speaking, the strength of a physical material is irrelevant.

 

[tmv]

That's an interesting concept. There are a lot of places in the future eras where strong defenses come into play: Shielding and Advanced Shielding, Metamaterials, Smart Dust, Superstrong Alloys, Megastrong Alloys, Weaponized Lasers and Photon Thermodynamics (lasers for defense).

Sounds like good places.

I like the idea of developing the line of buildings based on Arcology, which I think is the closest future equivalent of the Castle we have.

Certainly possible. What I was thinking of was "condensing" the population in the city (that would be the Arcology) and using the emptied space around the city for defensive structures over a wide-spread area with at least one wall around the area with heavy defenses (perhaps more like a Roman Army Camp than a castle) and one wall to protect the city proper. There would be bunkers, anti-air, gun turrets, minefields and perhaps a few airstrips with aircrafts, helicopters and drones (later on dropships and the like). At a later point instant additional walls could be created via Smart Dust, so you would have some delay layers and some hard defense layers.

There is little combat to speak of in space, but similar things could eventually be done around Orbital Megastructures, Lunar Megastructures, Planetary Megastructures, and Astroengineering.

Yes, but in those cases it would resemble a proper castle a bit more, it would certainly be less "stretched out".

 

[tmv]

What you will see, when it's more fully implemented, is a huge proliferation in the WAYS that weapons work past the modern era. We're starting to see this trend happening now, with microwave and sonic beams and lasers being employed in modern next generation weaponry, most of which is technically considered 'non-lethal' but could be used in lethal applications as well. The transhuman era imagines yet more inventions which open up new weapons, frost beams, sonic telekinetics, even technological and biological based telepathy and telepathic attack forms. Entering into the galactic eras it gets truly horrific with disintegration rays, gravity control, and flat out reality reprogramming (consider the physics of reality itself to be another program that can be tampered with.) After a point, defensively speaking, the strength of a physical material is irrelevant.

That would require the "bad promotions", wouldn't it? Interestingly, this resembles what the fantasy mods have already done with magic, I think. How do mods like FfH implement this?

 

[Thunderbrd]

bad promotions

Not sure what you mean here.

Your observation about magic is very apt. As our technology advances it begins to look more and more like our classic definition of magic, which begs the question - did we encounter such 'magic which was really high technology' at some point in our past, only to have those experiences be related to later generations in ways that have evolved into our current envisioning of what magic is? Either way, a sufficiently advanced society becomes more and more 'magical' as it goes. There's a lot of programming goals and steps and tasks to get this all implemented properly but I did foray into it with 'cold damage' at one point. I have a method and it works but I need to improve it so that it works with more types. There are numerous side-effects I seek to program into the fabric of these things as well. One example: Frost Beams so powerful they can freeze large swaths of ocean to entrap ships and units in the ice (and heat rays that can reverse the effect of course.)

How do mods like FfH implement this?

Same way we'll have to... reprogramming in the DLL to enable new effects. FfH did a lot to create a 'mana' based magic system and tracked the collection of many different types of energies and so on, which enabled a wizardly magic system for sure, but doesn't quite connect to the more sci-fi path to the same ends.

This mod has been developed from the beginning forward and there's still a lot to go here. That said, I've changed strategies a little to help support those later eras and that is to review a portion of the game mod-wide, with a little letting things go somewhat underworked in the transhuman and very underworked for galactic. Because once the full mod has been properly reviewed, we can then start developing those last few eras with an accurate eye for what values and numbers should be applied to things. When these eras get my full attention, they will be left a thing of wonder. The work Pepper is doing, and the work Azure did to form a lot of this platform, as well as CivFuerher and Hydro and Faustmouse will certainly find their visions in that eventual final future design as well. For the most part, my contribution will be to make the late game warfare a thing of wonder. At least in function... That's where good art support will be good too.