Dancing Hoskuld
Deity
I have removed your old version from the SVN. Should I put V3 on the SVN or are you fine with it the way it is?
This isn't yet in the main mod, is it?
I'm in the middle of the modern era now, going for Rocketry now. It's a tiny map on snail speed with one deity AI. There is also space, deep space, martian andlunar terrain, and asteroids on this map and I made it purely to check out your stuff ingame. If you (or anyone else) is interested, I'm happ to upload my savegame so others can test it, too.
The biggest buzzkill isn't turn times, but - as you stated - building lists. I tried my best to build as many buildings as possible, but it's almost impossible. I was thinking of adding three buildings just for me:
1) Production Ban at Wildlife Preservation, that will replace ALL Factories that produce something (the one that gives the 50% would still be buildable), since at least I only have one major production city and in my other cities they only clutter up the list.
2) Zero Tolerance at Law Enforcement, that will replace all buildings that can spawn criminals, like the Assassins Den etc.
3) Metal Industry Ban at Smithing, that will replace all Smelters and Smith's except for the basic smith that gives the 15% .
These are buildings most of us won't miss in most of their cities and it will "clean it up" a bit. I was thinking of making a building that replaces all these "+1 and +1 " Sport Buildings; maybe "Lazyness" at Televisions
Interesting idea but I would think something similar at City Planning or similar might be a bit more immersive. Basically at City planning you can choose what type of city it will be and that would remove lines of buildings. If the choice is via a building then you don't have to choose any and you can choose whenever you like.
Just an expansion on your idea.
I know that these were in the main mod and not your modmod, but I really like to see your stuff in the main mod anyways, so I might as well put space related things in here:
- Communication and Spy Satellites both require a Lat of max 60. That's just plain wrong. It doesn't matter where you launch them, they can still serve even the north pole. Not every orbit has to be equatorial.
- Communication Satellites require NASA or Commercial Spaceflight; the latter comes a lot further down the road. They should instead require a Launch Site; and ONE Launch Site in your empire should be enough.
Regarding buildings costs, that's a tricky one. When I tested V3, I had used Thunderbrd's suggested building cost guidelines. I decided that was too much and changed all Earth buildings to 75% of guidelines and non-Earth buildings to 33.3% of guidelines, but didn't test that change. If you find Sputnik too expensive, you will probably find everything else too expensive. What multiplier do you think would be appropriate? Keep in mind that Fusion will give a huge production boost (too much, I think), and I put in a lot of other buildings that give more hammers.
The reason for the latitude restriction is the cost of launching into equatorial orbit increases dramatically the further away from the equator you are and non-equatorial orbits are of less utility to a city building them.
Similarly one launch site in a nation would be fine early on but it should be one per team later and there should be the possibility of a trade treaty at some point where you use another nation's facilities.
In real life, there is no single city that builds satellites. Components are manufactured all over the world, and the satellite itself might be manufactured far from the launch site. So the latitude restrictions might be a bit arbitrary. I can see it for spaceports, though.
I agree with the first three. It might be worth adding an "Effect - NASA" to make space launches easier. I might make a similar change with the later Modern space missions, since they all require a Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the city (should be sufficient to have a JPL in any city).
Having something that enforces this limit early on is good but having it removed later would be more realistic in my opinion.
To be honest, I dislike the world project mechanism (e.g. Apollo Program, First Cloned Mammal). I understand the purpose. There is a "first mover" phenomenon in that the first civilization to develop a major new technology, such as nuclear fission or satellites, has to work a lot harder. But our use of the mechanism is so selective as to be arbitrary. Why no world projects such as "Newcomen Steam Engine" or "Gutenberg Printing Press"? They can also needlessly slow progress. I typically don't get First Cloned Mammal built until a few columns into the Transhuman Era, by which time my build lists are falling behind because I haven't gotten any Stem Cell Labs up yet. So, until I see a better way to use the world project mechanism, I prefer to avoid it.
Why "Effect - NASA"? We have the option to have a prereq like "Requires 1 NASA in your Empire". I think I'd go for: NASA -> Launch-Site -> Satellites (reqiure 1 Launch Site in total).
You basically can't use the chart or off-world colonies. This chart is not the holy grail, it was made by trying to fit a curve through production capabilities of a city. It works very well up until the Modern era, but after that it struggles as there aren't many production boosting buildings (as I said). They really lack there.