Space Colonization modmod

[Faustmouse]

Hmm yeah, that could be a problem. I don't know


Off-Planet Dumping and Space shipping Warehouse both come at Atronautics, which is way to early. The Warehouse would fit better at Spacestations or even Lunar Trade; the Off-Planet Dumping is something I'd rather remove from the game completely.

Cosmonaut Training Center: Why do military units get trained 50% faster from this? Probably + XP for Space Units would be better. Altought, it's quite early for space units (that would need xp) would show up.


Ion Propulsion is a prereq for Space Tourism, which I strongly disagree with. Ion Propulsion is for small probes that have a long flight time. For Space Tourism, the duration is quite short and the crafts have to be rather heavy.

Orbital Factory at Magnetic Levitation (also Advanced Enviromental Systems) seems strange. Why Magnetic Levitation? That won't allow you to put things into orbit; and in zero g you don't need Magnetic Levitation. I'd say instead of Magnetic Levitation, Space Stations would be more suitable; possibly later.

Space Elevator at Nanotech and Commercial Spaceflight is much too early. At least it should require Megastructures, too.

I saw you have a National Wonder "Lunar Outpost". My plan was it to have a chain of Terrain Improvments that will finally allow a city to be built on it; one of them is a Lunar Outpost. I'm happy to change that, but maybe you have a good idea on how these could interact in some way? My goal was simply to have a machanism that would force you to commit a lot of resources (gold and hammers) before you can even found your first city.

 

[pepper2000]

Off-Planet Dumping and Space shipping Warehouse both come at Atronautics, which is way to early. The Warehouse would fit better at Spacestations or even Lunar Trade; the Off-Planet Dumping is something I'd rather remove from the game completely.

Agreed. I was thinking of Orbital Flight for the Space Shipping Warehouse and Coilgun for Off-Planet Dumping (if we keep it at all). While on the subject, why is there no Recycling civic?

Cosmonaut Training Center: Why do military units get trained 50% faster from this? Probably + XP for Space Units would be better. Altought, it's quite early for space units (that would need xp) would show up.

Good question. I think this is one of Brackenspore's additions. I'll leave it alone for now.

Ion Propulsion is a prereq for Space Tourism, which I strongly disagree with. Ion Propulsion is for small probes that have a long flight time. For Space Tourism, the duration is quite short and the crafts have to be rather heavy.

You'll have to ask whoever designed the tech tree this way, but my guess is that the purpose is to put Space Tourism as late in the Modern Era as possible. This is one of several aspects of the late Modern and early Transhuman Eras that need to be adjusted.

Orbital Factory at Magnetic Levitation (also Advanced Enviromental Systems) seems strange. Why Magnetic Levitation? That won't allow you to put things into orbit; and in zero g you don't need Magnetic Levitation. I'd say instead of Magnetic Levitation, Space Stations would be more suitable; possibly later.

If memory serves me correctly, the orbital infrastructure mechanism was added as a way of representing buildings in space without any space tiles. I am planning on appropriating Orbital Factory and other orbital buildings for cislunar colonies. I have no idea about the Magnetic Levitation prereq, but this is far from the only instance of redundant or questionable prereqs for buildings and techs.

Space Elevator at Nanotech and Commercial Spaceflight is much too early. At least it should require Megastructures, too.

Agreed, though I was thinking of moving it to Superstrong Alloys. I would also like to make it a core piece on infrastructure that interacts with other buildings, though no specific plans yet.

I saw you have a National Wonder "Lunar Outpost". My plan was it to have a chain of Terrain Improvments that will finally allow a city to be built on it; one of them is a Lunar Outpost. I'm happy to change that, but maybe you have a good idea on how these could interact in some way? My goal was simply to have a machanism that would force you to commit a lot of resources (gold and hammers) before you can even found your first city.

That sounds like a good plan. I didn't have any idea of how the Lunar Outpost would interact with the real lunar buildings. I'll keep it in until you or someone else adds material at Lunar Bases, since I can't stand empty techs. Feel free to put the building to some other purpose.

 

[Faustmouse]

I think there are two Improvments at Lunar Bases; the Lunar Base and the Lunar Outpost.

Everything else you said: I agree. There is some work to do in terms of tech reqs etc. But what I've seen from your mod, I like it so far

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Sure it gets more expensive to launch something into an equatorial orbit the further north (or south) you go, but why does it have to be an equatorial orbit? The russians used an highly elliptical orbit so that their satellites stayed over russia most of the time and then got around the globe quickly. GPS is not completely in an equatorial orbit as well.

Which is exactly what I said in the next sentence.

Getting something into stable orbit is very hard at the start of the space race but not so hard now.

I have no problem with removing the restriction on Spy Satellites but the rest should have the restriction until the tech for the Space Shuttle becomes available. Not because of the Shuttle but because of the technology needed to build it.

That works well for buildings such as NASA that you only build once. But what I'm concerned about is a situation like with the Major League Stadium. It requires two Minor League Stadiums. But if you want 2 Majors, you need 4 Minors, and so on.

This is a very important mechanism in BtS that we have used far to little in C2C. It is yet another way of reducing the building clutter. I have used it for the Bead/Pottery/?/?/Rope lines of buildings from hut to guild to factory. It reduces the number of later buildings rather than the early ones. It is a better representation of reality as well by as not every city should be able to build every factory.

 

[pepper2000]

The "Requires X Buildings" is actually quite a useful mechanism now, so I wouldn't want to change it. I use it myself; for instance, you need one Maglev Launcher on Earth for every Cislunar Resupply you build in space. There are some tricks, such as the Effect buildings, to make it work the way Faustmouse described, though it's a bit clunky.

 

[Faustmouse]

I finally made it to lunar and martian colonies

- As said before, using the building cost chart for off world colonies doesn't make much sense; your first building was waaaaay too expensive.

- As expensive as it was, you didn't change the "rush" modifier. This allowed it for me to buy it with just 70k (1 turn income) You probably want to increase this buy a factor of 100 or so; otherwise you can buy the entire colony basically for free.

-

 

[pepper2000]

I didn't realize about iHurryCostModifier. I will put that in for all non-Earth buildings in the next version. As for cost, I think you've got a good balance with the lunar buildings, so I will try to hit similar costs and production figures with Mars.

 

[Faustmouse]

My design strategy was:

- Get some infrastructure done that allow using lunar minerals to build stuff -> Lunar Concrete Mill gives a HUGE Production Modifier.

- Have some buildings only buildable by units -> expensives Launches from Earth required.

- Become more and more self sustainable (after your first city on the moon, the others can grow more easily.

 

[pepper2000]

Has anyone ever done something with a Project in a modmod? I am trying to do a simple overwrite of PrereqTech for the Apollo Program, but with a ProjectInfo.xml file in the modmod folder, C2C just refuses to load.

One of those days when nothing seems to work.

 

[Arakhor]

I think it's to do with the WoC settings, or something like that. I know that I tried messing about with the Galactic wonders and I didn't get far unless I edited the base files directly.

 

[majaczek]

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

maybe "eSports" then "VR Games" and National Wonders - "eSports championship of the World (earth)" then "VR Chamionship of Earth/Luna/Mars" (three separate buildings)

 

[pepper2000]

I haven't heard or thought much about building consolidation lately, but I still want to work on that. The sports buildings are high on my list of buildings that I want to be gone by the end of the game. There should be something in V5.

Majaczek: if memory serves me correct, once upon a time most of the sports buildings went obsolete at Virtual Reality. That was especially problematic with the buildings at Modern Sports and Extreme Sports, which had very short lifetimes. I was thinking of Battlefield Sports as the place there the end-all-be-all sports buildings come out.

As for V4, it is almost done and should be posted in a few days. The main thing left to do is test run. Highlights are as follows:

- Cislunar, Solar System, and Interstellar colonies are now separated out with their own terrains, and many new buildings are added in each of those areas. But Venus and the other planets do not have their own terrains yet.
- The Galactic tech tree is expanded again. I was inspired by conversations with Thunderbrd and others a while ago about how the ending might look like.
- Weapons (walls, cannons, and traps) in space. They don't do much good until there are military units, though.
- Incorporated Faustmouse's suggestions, except the aforementioned Apollo issue.
- Buildings costs in space should be more reasonable.
- A few other Earth, Moon, and Mars buildings added.

Anything else that needs to be addressed for V4? Faustmouse, I really do appreciate you playing through and making comments.

 

[Faustmouse]

Not yet. I have been busy the last time and didn't play c2c at all :/ But I think today I might

Nice to hear there is a new version coming!

 

[majaczek]

maybe the VR-Games should replace sports buildings (automatically by town villagers) and be able to build in those towns which doesn't have yet. I don't think it should go ENTIRELY obsolete.

there is a dffierence between friend-game and sport-game, no matter if it is Football or DoTA. So I think making championship etc. would benefit more (happiness etc.) than just having VR discovered.

Or if you don't want autobuild of VR-centre and VR-championship, you may mark them replace and make people unhappy (unhappiness, maybe even revolution points) if not built yet

 

[pepper2000]

I just posted V4. Here are some thought on V5 and beyond.

1) My development strategy up to now has favored quantity over quality. There are hundreds of new buildings, though in the cislunar, solar system, and interstellar colonies, the build chains are not very well thought out. I still have a few more ideas, and more buildings will be added in V5, but now I will be shifting my focus from making new buildings to organizing the ones that are already in and making them more interesting.

2) For V5, my top priority is to set up independent colonies on Venus and the other planets. That means I'll have to figure out terrains, which I haven't done yet. If all else fails, I can provide a snippet of code that the player manual inserts into the C2C files.

The Venus line will be much less extensive than Mars, and not much new is planned there. Short lines are planned at Mercury, Asteroid, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Kuiper Belt (each of which is considered a "planet" for this mod and will be given a Jovian map category). Unlike the Moon and Mars, these planets will not be essential for interstellar colonization, but each will give a unique reward that you can't get elsewhere.

3) The interstellar line is most in need of clean-up. My vision for interstellar development goes in four phases. In Phase 1, you start by scouting a planet and setting up some cities and industries. This gets you more or less to the level that the home solar system is. In Phase 2, you are focused on astroengineering projects such as Ringworlds and Dyson Spheres. In Phase 3, which begins with wormholes, the focus is on commerce and connecting the galaxy. Phase 4, which is still nebulous in my mind, is based on transcendent technologies and involves colonizing other galaxies, parallel universes, etc.

Somehow, I want to design the interstellar line to neatly reflect the four phases.

Additionally, Phase 1 in the tech tree needs to be expanded. As it is now, there is too little time between the first interstellar colony and the first astroengineering projects, and I want early interstellar development to focus on things like planet scouting, terraforming, city building, and industrialization. So for those of you who think the tech tree is still too short, I'll be working on that.

4) Units. I know I said I wanted to add units for V4 and didn't, but that's still on the to-do list. High on my list are a Martian worker and at least one military unit for each terrain type that is used. At the top of my wish list is a mechanism for space settlers so we don't have to use World Builder, but I'm still scratching my head over that.

5) Building consolidation. I plan to start that in V5 by making some of those old Earth buildings obsolete and/or replaced by new buildings, starting with the sports buildings. I'm hoping also that this paves the way to buff the new buildings.

6) I want to try to split the Transhuman and Galactic eras into three.

Well, that's a lot, and it probably won't all happen in V5. But if I can, it will all be done eventually.

 

[Faustmouse]

Sounds pretty awesome! I will download it later and hopefully have time to play around with it. Regarding Space Settlers, first thing that needs to be done is reduce the city size they found to 1. I had a mechanism in my mind and DH said it was doable, but I never got to actually do that

Here is my idea:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=14124914&postcount=214 and the following.

Might work well for the moon; for mars and beyond there could be another mission that allows to pick a 3 x 3 grid where the rover will randomly land (as accuracy improves). DH tried to guide me through a mission that will pick a random lunar plot, but yeah... I couldn't do it

 

[Arakhor]

Well, the more of the off-world stuff you can take out of the main mod and put in the submod, the better. I'd also caution you against overcomplicating the tech-tree. If that looks confusing, everyone will be worse off.

 

[pepper2000]

Faustmouse: that sounds like a good plan. I like how it allows a jump start on colonization in the Modern Era, rather that doing everything at once. Mars could be very similar (perhaps add a basic work unit at one of the early Transhuman space techs).

I haven't yet attempted to do anything with Python. Even with XML, I find that a lot of things that seem straightforward turn out to have complications. For instance, why can I not modify world projects in the modmod, or why are my terrains messed up? Someday, I'll give it a try. Maybe I could then make some of the wonders truly unique. For now, I'm hoping you or someone else figures it out first.

Arakhor: I appreciate the concern for keeping the late tech tree organized. As it is now, I consider the late Galactic Era tree (Interstellar Colonization and beyond) to be incomplete. There are far too few techs for a meaningful interstellar era, most of them are empty, and some things need to be fixed organizationally. For instance, it shouldn't possible to get Artificial Stars without Interstellar Colonization.

Now that I have this four phase system in mind, I'll design the tree to reflect that. It will be long, yes, but I hope not confusing.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Faustmouse and Pepper: You guys are doing great work here and I'm almost always loving everything I see you guys proposing and discussing out. I just wanted to mention that it's great to have you guys working on this front.

 

[pepper2000]

Thanks Thunderbrd. I think I've had even more fun designing this modmod than playing it.