Space Colonization modmod

[Faustmouse]

Thanks for taking a look!

Did you intend to have Orbit terrain around the moon? Because on Raxo's map it's not, which means the Path on the moon could connect to Cislunar Trajectory, meaning in theory I should be able to trade between these two.

Venus buildings (unlocked at Planetary Manufacturing) take 7-8 turns, Martian just 3.
Overall, most of the time Cislunar, Martian and Venus cities build research as there is nothing else to do.
The Moon is quite busy. That might be because of more lunar buildings, or because they are more expensive. Most take 10-20 turns to build, while yours are around 3-7 turns.

Some of your unification buildings (Ultra Refinery, Textile Manufacturing...) have worse stats than the replaced buildigns combined. Building the Ultrarefinery for example showed -189 in the calculator.

 

[pepper2000]

Did you intend to have Orbit terrain around the moon? Because on Raxo's map it's not, which means the Path on the moon could connect to Cislunar Trajectory, meaning in theory I should be able to trade between these two.

Originally I envisioned that Orbit would be a buffer between any distinct zones (Earth, Cislunar, Lunar, Mars, Venus, Solar System, Interstellar, Intergalactic), but I think that's impractical and unnecessary. Plus direct trade makes sense (e.g. Mass Drivers are much easier to operate on the Moon than on Earth). But we should still have Orbit buffering Earth from everything else.

Venus buildings (unlocked at Planetary Manufacturing) take 7-8 turns, Martian just 3.
Overall, most of the time Cislunar, Martian and Venus cities build research as there is nothing else to do.
The Moon is quite busy. That might be because of more lunar buildings, or because they are more expensive. Most take 10-20 turns to build, while yours are around 3-7 turns.

Thanks for giving the figures. I agree that the build time need to be tweaked and that they should take a little longer to build. Pushing that forward, a good ideal is that terraforming, which is the capstone of development on Mars, Venus, and the moons, should be done around the end of the Galactic Era even though the tech to do it is in the early Galactic Era. And before terraforming is done, we shouldn't have these cities running out of things to build.

Some of your unification buildings (Ultra Refinery, Textile Manufacturing...) have worse stats than the replaced buildigns combined. Building the Ultrarefinery for example showed -189 in the calculator.

Ah yes. The Ultrarefinery replaces the Oil Refinery, which gives +10%. So the Ultrarefinery should have a percentage bonus too. As for the others, I wouldn't expect that a city would necessarily have every building that the consolidated building would replace, but since we could use more production in the late eras, I might give them an upgrade.

Speaking of production, I think the Fusion Power Plant needs to be nerfed by about a factor of 10, but I don't want to do that until at least some of those hammers are made up from other sources.

 

[tmv]

But we should still have Orbit buffering Earth from everything else.

I don't think that would be a very good idea (unlike pretty much anything else from this modmod), although trade with Earth take a while before it can happen. I mean - certainly it should be possible to ship goods from and to Earth in mid-Galactic-ish. And IIRC the later ships from Thunderbrd's redesign have prerequisites that cannot be produced on Earth, so these ships could never exist there.

 

[Thunderbrd]

And IIRC the later ships from Thunderbrd's redesign have prerequisites that cannot be produced on Earth, so these ships could never exist there.

Well noted. Will have to look out for that once implementation begins.

 

[Faustmouse]

Not so sure about the Fusion Power Plant... It is a big step up, but not THAT dramatic as I thought... there are two issues with it that I think are more concerning:

1) Fusion Tech immeadiatly obsoletes most other forms of power generation, so there is a gap between researching it and actually building the first plant (which can take a while if the ITER wasn't built before).
2) It is a NW, yet it seems to have normal buildings requiring it... Probably time to make it a normal building (as almost all other Powerplants are) when you reduce the output.

Cislunar Colonies might be interesting for manufacturing certain goods that work better in a microgravity enviroment. That could make some buildings maybe... Or a wonder, a large scale Accelerator around the earth. Satellite Manufacturing (reducing launch costs, allowing better com sats etc). Science Satellites. Antimatter collectors (from the Van Allen belt)

Also I thought about Sputnik, and it might be a good idea to move the wonder (and a way to get it) to Advanced Rocketry. After all, it wasn't a "real" Satellite; at least not a very advanced one. Satellites enable Comsats, which would require a powersource and some processing power, rather than just sending a signal for a few hours... The Sputnik Wonder could make the Satellite Unit train 50% faster, as you already know what you are doing maybe.

 

[pepper2000]

I don't think that would be a very good idea (unlike pretty much anything else from this modmod), although trade with Earth take a while before it can happen. I mean - certainly it should be possible to ship goods from and to Earth in mid-Galactic-ish. And IIRC the later ships from Thunderbrd's redesign have prerequisites that cannot be produced on Earth, so these ships could never exist there.

It makes sense from a realism standpoint. At Planetary Trade, for instance, there are some indirect mechanisms for trading resources between Earth and Mars. From a practical standpoint, allowing direct trade routes between Earth and the rest of space could be computationally quite burdensome. Based on other discussions I've seen here, it looks like trade routes are one of the major factors that run up turn times.

1) Fusion Tech immeadiatly obsoletes most other forms of power generation, so there is a gap between researching it and actually building the first plant (which can take a while if the ITER wasn't built before).
2) It is a NW, yet it seems to have normal buildings requiring it... Probably time to make it a normal building (as almost all other Powerplants are) when you reduce the output.

For now I am thinking of leaving it alone. The normal buildings that require it are just resource factories and you don't need more than one anyway. And there are some regular building fusion plants later on. As far as obsoleting power plants, that can be a tricky issue. The nuclear, hydro, and renewable plants are still good after Fusion, but a player who isn't expecting the fossil plants to go obsolete might be caught unprepared.

Fusion is very difficult technology, and we still haven't gotten it working after 60 years of research. C2C is based on the model that the ITER route is what will get us there, and if that is what happens, the world's first fusion plants will be very large and expensive, justifying their National Wonder status. On the other hand, I would have more faith in various start-up and research initiatives to design smaller, even modular fusion generators.

Cislunar Colonies might be interesting for manufacturing certain goods that work better in a microgravity enviroment. That could make some buildings maybe... Or a wonder, a large scale Accelerator around the earth. Satellite Manufacturing (reducing launch costs, allowing better com sats etc). Science Satellites. Antimatter collectors (from the Van Allen belt)

I'm not sure how far you are, but some of those things appear later in the tech tree. There's scope to think of some more high tech satellites.

Also I thought about Sputnik, and it might be a good idea to move the wonder (and a way to get it) to Advanced Rocketry. After all, it wasn't a "real" Satellite; at least not a very advanced one. Satellites enable Comsats, which would require a powersource and some processing power, rather than just sending a signal for a few hours... The Sputnik Wonder could make the Satellite Unit train 50% faster, as you already know what you are doing maybe.

It was actually at Advanced Rocketry until recently, but I moved it to Satellites so the Satellite unit could build it. Maybe I'll put it back as a wonder that is built normally. I like the idea of allowing faster training of the Satellite unit.

 

[Faustmouse]

Traderoutes are NOT expensive in terms of processing time. Alberts debunked this myth in the thread about traderoutes.

Ok sounds fine about the Fusion reactor. I thought about a series of events that would deplete Oil and Coal resources from the map after a certain checkpoint.

Not that far. I think I'm about 80% through the Nano Era now. But I'm curious what you've done with the later eras

I still like the way to build it via a satellite... Moving Satellite (Unit) to advanced rocketry seems bad... Having a clone of a Satellite that unlocks at Advanced Rocketry, has a limit of 1 and is replaced by normal satellites later is not that great either...

 

[pepper2000]

I just did an SVN update that incorporates many of the changes we have talked about in this thread.

The building costs for most space buildings is now significantly higher. I know we're not going to get a perfect read with the change occurring in the middle of the game, but I am interested to know if we have the right building speeds now. My general principle is that each type of space colony should be able to just barely keep up with the core buildings without rushing production, so long as you are strategic in managing the colonies.

 

[Thunderbrd]

If any of those are in the core, do us both a favor and keep the data on a spreadsheet as I'll innevitably overwrite it. However this could be quite temporary as I'm only including ONE consideration at the moment to costing buildings and that's the most advanced tech it unlocks at. I realize that by category (and I'm categorizing things as we go here) that we're going to want to consider buildings for adjustments to these base costs for other causes, which it sounds like your latest changes are mostly taking into account. So we'll have to itemize what those causes are and apply them across the board where applicable. Once my charting is completed this will be very easily done in a more systematic manner. But your thought processes will be the gold to extract and apply once we're ready for that stage of application, if that makes any sense.

 

[pepper2000]

I didn't quite understand all that. I did make a few changes to some Earth buildings (space building latitude requirements and a few others), but I did not alter the cost of any core building. In my previous post, "core buildings" refer to the most important buildings in the chains for space colonies, not to buildings in the game core; sorry for the confusion.

Off-planet buildings are on very different cost formulas than Earth buildings.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Core buildings = buildings in the core mod xml document.

What I'm saying is this:
1) I've been, for the last month or two, working on establishing new costs on all buildings according to this chart: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/modders-documentation.441325/page-10#post-14723083

2) This chart ONLY establishes a building's iCost by the most advanced tech prereq the building possesses. Thus, if the most advanced prereq tech for a building is on the X Grid of 5, then according to the chart, the building shall have an iCost of 30.

3) At the moment this is how ALL buildings are getting their iCosts established.

4) As I go I'm also categorizing all buildings into categories such as Agriculture, Administrative, Industrial, etc...

5) This will make it easier to look through all buildings in a given category and adjust those buildings by a proceeduraly established adjustment factor. For example, at the moment all power plants are in the Electrical category. A review of the Electrical category may give us visibility on cost adjustments for all the buildings in that category. We can say all power plants should be +100% the normal cost, or get even more interesting by establishing that cost is part of what makes various power generators vary in the quality of being a solution (aka, some are more polluting but cheaper to build.)

6) At the moment, my work on this encompasses the core Regular_CIV4BuildingInfos.xml file, but therafter, I will be diving into the modules. If you want me to ignore yours, you'll have to simply let me know and I'll let you balance them to the new costs of buildings similar to them before and after.

7) You have taken into account more factors than just the tech prerequisite for your cost considerations. We need to itemize what factors you were considering there. This is because after this first wave of the project, we'll have to start giving consideration, on a category by category basis, other factors that play a role in establishing the costs of those buildings.

 

[pepper2000]

OK, I see.

4) As I go I'm also categorizing all buildings into categories such as Agriculture, Administrative, Industrial, etc...

What about that old spreadsheet I did? A number of new buildings have been added (not just by me) since then, but maybe it would still be useful?

6) At the moment, my work on this encompasses the core Regular_CIV4BuildingInfos.xml file, but therafter, I will be diving into the modules. If you want me to ignore yours, you'll have to simply let me know and I'll let you balance them to the new costs of buildings similar to them before and after.

It might be better to bypass mine. For the buildings, I still generate them procedurally from python code. But I can easily program the formula once you have it nailed down.

 

[Thunderbrd]

What about that old spreadsheet I did? A number of new buildings have been added (not just by me) since then, but maybe it would still be useful?

Exactly what I've been building on to... you should take a look Your efforts have been tremendously helpful in giving a head start.

It might be better to bypass mine. For the buildings, I still generate them procedurally from python code. But I can easily program the formula once you have it nailed down.

Interesting. I figured if I were to try to code a procedure, the new tags to allow for variation controls would add too much data to maintain to be truly useful as we're trying to limit the data storage to reduce MAF potential.

 

[Faustmouse]

How's your recosting project going TB? In advance, please leave the buildings in the lunar colonization mod alone as well. For costs, I basically did it via try and error; I calculated how long I want each building to require and then went backwards with hoch much production the city would have. For simplicity, I'm happy if we move this stuff to pepper's folder to have only one folder with off-world stuff, as I am certain that I won't work with it again (no time for that ) I'm happy to give feedback though!

I'll try your changes pepper, probably later today. I'm within the last 3 colums of the Nano Era, I'd estimate (as it happens I haven't played for a while until yesterday evening). Another idea I had was: What about a Version of Research that can only be build in space and is 2x as powerful than normal Research? It probably won't impact the game too much, but it could be a nice flavor thingy.

 

[Thunderbrd]

How's your recosting project going TB?

Slow but getting there. Y'all would find that the late game costs are MUCH lower as a standard now than they were. Given that there's been the complaint about not enough production in the lategame and I'm really not thrilled with how electrical buildings are translating directly to production, this should be helpful. Point being, if you don't want me to touch that module, then it's going to need to be reviewed after I'm done because you'll probably be about 20-50% too high on your icosts to blend in properly if it's past modern.

Trial and error still means you're considering details about the buildings beyond just the tech level they are unlocked at. Again, at some point soon we'll need to discuss and list what details adjust the cost from that basis, and how by much those factors play a role.

 

[Faustmouse]

Actually, with Pepper's latest additions (and extremely OP Fusion Power and Utility Fog), all buildings so far (late Nano Era) have about the right costs now (2-3 turns per building on Snail IIRC). He added quite a few neat production increasing buildings here Not sure how it developes afterwards.

The problem with spacebuildings is, that your new found colonies are tiny cities without much free buildings that are not designed to grow fast. Giving them the same iCost as similar terrestrial buildings is not a good idea at all. Surely one way to do that would be to give the free Base building +2000 or so and then add a few heavy production increasing buildings that represent on-site resource usage. Also since there are far fewer building available in space than on earth, these should take 2-3 times as long.

Regarding the Spacemod:

- New buildings now take around 7 turns. There is still downtime then, as techs take 5 turns on average (about to leave the nanotech era now)
- Telescreen is faaar to expensive, compared to other buildings
- Martian and Venusian Worker take 26 turns while buildings take 7ish. They are cheap to hurry though Also they come quite "late" and you can't build the other improvments there before that (might be intented, still fine)
- There are FAR too many -Disease buildings in this era, each require another one of these. This is especially useless as most diseases obsolete at smart medizin. These are not yours, I know that, but they are in the future eras so I thought I post it here. Feel free to ignore that
- Silicon Based Life is buildable on earth, yet gives a bonus to lunar buildings. All the other life forms that increase terraforming are build on the respective planet, why is this?
- The Prereq for Cislunar Cloaking is Cloaking, which gives a +5 spy bonus to the building.

 

[Faustmouse]

- Transneptunian Solar Array should not be an option (way to inefficient, even beyond Jupiter it's questionable... There is plenty of Hydrogen there, so maybe Fusion or Fuel Cells?
- cislunar particle accelerator takes only 3 turns but I have many Solar Panels in vicinity

After researching every tech in the Nano Era, my colonies have this size:

- Martian: 10 to 17 pop
- Venus cities 5 pop
- Cislunar: 13 pop
- Lunar 23 pop


Edit:
Progressing through the Transhuman era...

- Techs get more and more expensive. While they were at 3 turns each in Modern Era, they reached 5 turns in the Nano Era and now are at 12 turns each, unless I build Research in all of my cities, then they drop to 5 turns. However, I think with enhanced intelligence and super AI all around, there could be more buildings that add more research (even % modifiers). Production is very good as it is!

- Martian Colonies are busy, but all other (Deep Space, Lunar, Venus, Cislunar) are kinda bored...

- I really really like how lean the building list became. Either through high production or AI Management (that builds buildings I never build) or through massive Unification and Obsoletion of buildings. Well done! Now it doesn't take ages till a city screen loads

 

[pepper2000]

- New buildings now take around 7 turns. There is still downtime then, as techs take 5 turns on average (about to leave the nanotech era now)

Still not all the way there. How much more would you suggest turning up costs?

- Telescreen is faaar to expensive, compared to other buildings

I think that was one of Brackenspore's buildings. Some of the mythological animal breeders are also too expensive. Something for Tbrd to cover in his review.

- Martian and Venusian Worker take 26 turns while buildings take 7ish. They are cheap to hurry though Also they come quite "late" and you can't build the other improvments there before that (might be intented, still fine)

They shouldn't take nearly so long; will check on that. I did intend for them to be late, though. Mars and Venus colonies are meant be autonomous for a long time, until you can build the vactrains to connect them in a unified network. But I do want the improvements to come earlier. I think I'll make the workers come earlier, and use the new Hyperloop (which I will rename Vactrain) route instead of Maglev.

- There are FAR too many -Disease buildings in this era, each require another one of these. This is especially useless as most diseases obsolete at smart medizin. These are not yours, I know that, but they are in the future eras so I thought I post it here. Feel free to ignore that

I agree. For all intents and purposes, the Disease mechanic is moot by the Nanotech Era. We might counteract by adding +Disease components to some other future buildings, and maybe some future diseases. In the Transhuman Era, we might even integrate biological and cybernetic diseases. Lots of room for creativity there.

- Silicon Based Life is buildable on earth, yet gives a bonus to lunar buildings. All the other life forms that increase terraforming are build on the respective planet, why is this?

Good question. Probably poor planning. I'll rework it somehow.

- The Prereq for Cislunar Cloaking is Cloaking, which gives a +5 spy bonus to the building.

Good catch. I'll change that too.

 

[pepper2000]

- Transneptunian Solar Array should not be an option (way to inefficient, even beyond Jupiter it's questionable... There is plenty of Hydrogen there, so maybe Fusion or Fuel Cells?

Probably right. At any rate, I don't think you can get your colonies that far out until Solar Ordnance, which is a ways off in the tech tree.

- cislunar particle accelerator takes only 3 turns but I have many Solar Panels in vicinity

From the looks of things, the Cislunar Particle Accelerator should be on par with other cislunar buildings around the same era. As noted above, we might have to up the building costs a little more.

- Techs get more and more expensive. While they were at 3 turns each in Modern Era, they reached 5 turns in the Nano Era and now are at 12 turns each, unless I build Research in all of my cities, then they drop to 5 turns. However, I think with enhanced intelligence and super AI all around, there could be more buildings that add more research (even % modifiers). Production is very good as it is!

That's a relatively recent change, I think. There will be more steps up in tech costs in each of the remaining eras, and they do get quite expensive at the end. Technological Singularity should grant a super research building of some sort, as should some other far future techs, such as when you are turning entire planets into computronium.

- Martian Colonies are busy, but all other (Deep Space, Lunar, Venus, Cislunar) are kinda bored...

For Lunar and Cislunar, that seems reasonable. By the Transhuman Era, your focus should be shifting away from cislunar space and out to the solar system. There are some cislunar wonders coming up, and more buildings will be trickling in, but not much. If Deep Space is running out of things to build, that's a sign that costs need to be upped there, and/or those colonies should have a larger set of initial buildings to work with. As for Venus, that will probably always be of secondary importance to the others, but maybe higher building costs are needed there too. I'd like Venus and Mars colonies to keep busy until terraforming, and after that you are mostly done with them. Your work with Deep Space colonies culminates with launching interstellar seedships.

- I really really like how lean the building list became. Either through high production or AI Management (that builds buildings I never build) or through massive Unification and Obsoletion of buildings. Well done! Now it doesn't take ages till a city screen loads

Glad to hear that. I found that building consolidation made the late eras much more playable for that reason alone.

Thanks again for the comments. It is very helpful because there are many things that I just won't see when I play my own mod.

 

[Faustmouse]

Still not all the way there. How much more would you suggest turning up costs?

Probably doubling it again is fine even. One problem could be that some ET buildings give quite high compared to their cost, so this could mess up your planning "on paper".

They shouldn't take nearly so long; will check on that. I did intend for them to be late, though. Mars and Venus colonies are meant be autonomous for a long time, until you can build the vactrains to connect them in a unified network. But I do want the improvements to come earlier. I think I'll make the workers come earlier, and use the new Hyperloop (which I will rename Vactrain) route instead of Maglev.

Sounds good to me. This probably needs to be changed for the moon, too, as Maglev now requires Copper, which isn't available on the moon.

I agree. For all intents and purposes, the Disease mechanic is moot by the Nanotech Era. We might counteract by adding +Disease components to some other future buildings, and maybe some future diseases. In the Transhuman Era, we might even integrate biological and cybernetic diseases. Lots of room for creativity there.

Could be one idea. MRSA and similar would spring in my mind. Another idea would be to give those buildings more :research: or possibly -X% food too grow, as people are getting older. I'd still like to represent the problem with overpopulation in the nano era, but this would probably open up a can of worms...

Probably right. At any rate, I don't think you can get your colonies that far out until Solar Ordnance, which is a ways off in the tech tree.

Uhm.... I was able to colonize everything up to the Oort cloud after researching... Deep Space Colonization? Not sure about the name, it was in the same column as Planetary Trade and in the 1st row. This enabled Mercury colonies and , Asteroids end even everything up to Neptune and it's moons. I can attach a savegame if you'd like.

From the looks of things, the Cislunar Particle Accelerator should be on par with other cislunar buildings around the same era. As noted above, we might have to up the building costs a little more.

Generally I've seen you are very conservative with most building stats. Compared to my lunar stuff they barely cost gold and I think in the long run, that should be more in line with each other. Either your approach or my "space is freaking expensive!" approach, I don't mind. Your wonders are very immersive, but also come with "poor" stats for a wonder, most of the time.

That's a relatively recent change, I think. There will be more steps up in tech costs in each of the remaining eras, and they do get quite expensive at the end. Technological Singularity should grant a super research building of some sort, as should some other far future techs, such as when you are turning entire planets into computronium.

As mentioned it might be a good idea to give those - Disease buildings more research. Also, your buildings could use a "buff" as well.

For Lunar and Cislunar, that seems reasonable. By the Transhuman Era, your focus should be shifting away from cislunar space and out to the solar system. There are some cislunar wonders coming up, and more buildings will be trickling in, but not much. If Deep Space is running out of things to build, that's a sign that costs need to be upped there, and/or those colonies should have a larger set of initial buildings to work with. As for Venus, that will probably always be of secondary importance to the others, but maybe higher building costs are needed there too. I'd like Venus and Mars colonies to keep busy until terraforming, and after that you are mostly done with them. Your work with Deep Space colonies culminates with launching interstellar seedships.

More buildings would actually be quite nice. Clutter is bad, but having a choice is nice.

Glad to hear that. I found that building consolidation made the late eras much more playable for that reason alone.

Thanks again for the comments. It is very helpful because there are many things that I just won't see when I play my own mod.

Yeah I'm looking forward to when TB gets to review building lines and we can identify upgrade and obsoletion paths. The clutter in the old modern era was the worst thing actually.
By the way, I think Long Livity or Cure of Cancer should be wonders, at best. Not Projects. So should the SDI and Laser Array and what not. Also Spaceship parts come WAY too early now. They are the very endgame and should not be buildable in the Nano Era...

Always glad to help!
So, do you have any plans for future updates or do you want to suprise us?^^