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Author Topic: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")  (Read 17445 times)

Retry

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Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« on: January 15, 2019, 03:10:23 PM »

[NOTE: POST MAY INCLUDE SPOILERS]

There's a plethora of market features that can be found on planets, most of which add to the hazard rating of the planet, and it occurred to me the other day that some of these planetary features seem like they should be non-permanent and removable or otherwise overcome by the player within the time-frame that a game of StarSector takes.  I think having certain planetary features be overcome would differentiate the market features a little over just being several flavors of 25% or 50% hazard rating modifiers and would add an interesting dimension as well: For instance, Certain planets with good deposits but certain "removable" features would have a high hazard rating at first and could be a poor candidate for early colonization but, upon finding certain techs or just getting enough capital, could be dealt with by some time and monetary investment and make the planet a worthwhile and productive colony in the late game.

I think a few specific examples would showcase my suggestion better:

HOT/EXTREME HEAT/COLD/EXTREME COLD
Solved or partially solved by constructing a Planetary Shield Generator on the planet, which would create a new modifier on the planet.  If the condition is hot, the description of the new "Planetary Shield Climate Control" modifier would be something like "The shield generator on this planet is reflecting excess energy from the planet's star, artificially lowering its blazing temperatures to a more tolerable level."  For cold conditions, the modifier would read "The shield generator on this planet is configured to act as a replacement or supplement of the market's atmosphere, letting in whatever limited energy its star provides and trapping it with the shield as long as possible to warm the planet to more tolerable levels."

In either case, having the Planetary Shield Generator operational would decrease the hazard rating by the "Climate Control" market condition by a low amount (Say ~1%) each month, up to a maximum of -25% (completely nullifying the penalty of a regular cold/hot world, and partially dealing with extreme cold/hot worlds.).  If the planet's shield generator is disrupted by, say, a raid, the hazard rating increases by a similar rate per month until the disruption is over.

IRRADIATED
This condition may also be solvable via a planetary shield, based upon the description of Irradiated including that the colonists live in shielded habitats.  Building a planetary shield on an Irradiated world would add a different shield-based market condition with a description like "The entire planet is being shielded from radiation by its shield generator.  However, it will still take some time for the lingering effects of the radiation to dissipate."  Having the generator decreases the hazard rating by a low amount each month, up to a maximum of -25%.  However, if the planet's shield generator is disrupted, the hazard rating resets completely as the planet immediately gets bombarded by the full force of the star's outgoing radiation again.

DECIVILIZED SUBPOPULATION
This one should be able to be eliminated pretty much immediately with no help from advanced technology, and I can think of at least 2 ways to implement it.

The first is actively, by enacting or adding some sort of policy tab that allows you to deal with the unruly subpopulation.  There could be two separate ways to do it by policy: Either by integrating them relatively peacefully (less stability malus and keeping pop growth bonus, but takes longer to eliminate the malus), or by forcefully cracking down on the populace making your life difficult (higher stability malus and less pop growth, but the malus gets nullified much quicker).  This could either be just a product of time or require some credit intake like "encourage pop growth" does.

The second is just passively reducing and later eliminating penalties just as the market size grows.  At market size 9 or 10 where I have billions of people on a planet, the original 1,000 or whatever inhabitants from the subpopulation would be just a drop in the bucket as far as demographics are concerned.  Perhaps sufficiently large colonies should then just naturally lose that malus?

POLLUTION
Also doesn't require any fancy technology, just some substantial credit and time investment to enact a planetary cleaning campaign, which reduces the hazard penalty at a low monthly rate until the planet is "clean" and the hazard penalty is completely nullified.

It could be interesting if this modifier could actually be generated on developed planets in some way.  Say, you could enact a policy to overlook or reduce industrial regulations on a planet with heavy industry to reduce its upkeep by some extent, at the cost of having a chance to produce the "Polluted" modifier if that industry gets bombed.

METEOR IMPACTS
This is probably the most intuitive condition that a Planetary Shield Generator would solve: Building one on a "Meteor Impacts" planet would create a new planetary condition with the description "This planet's shield generator is protecting it from meteor impacts" and have an immediate -50% hazard rating modifier, nullifying the effect from the market condition Meteor Impacts.  This would be temporarily removed if the Planetary Shield Generator is disrupted.
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Megas

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2019, 03:21:05 PM »

Decivilized can be removed by building a colony then abandoning it.  Player can then rebuild colony without Decivilized.  (Credit to FlyingBirdy for this exploit.)  Honestly, Decivilized should disappear after planet gets big enough, or at least lumped in with pirate activity.

Pollution can be generated on a habitable world by bombing it!  This can hurt if factions in later releases will bomb your planet if your defenses are too high.  It would be nice if there is a way to remove pollution, and abandoning colony does not remove pollution.
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Shad

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2019, 03:48:44 PM »

Can buildings be modded to add/remove planetary features (or modify hazard rating)?
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Wyvern

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2019, 04:01:40 PM »

Can buildings be modded to add/remove planetary features (or modify hazard rating)?
Yes.

I'm actually almost done with a mod that changes how the planetary shield generator functions, and I seriously considered giving it some of the traits Retry mentioned.  I eventually decided not to, but I also hadn't considered the meteor impacts trait; that one really should be affected by building a planetary shield.  (I probably wouldn't reduce it to zero impact - half might be reasonable - but yeah, it doesn't make sense that a shield generator would have no effect on that.  Or, if I were doing re-balancing from scratch, I'd make meteor impacts a +25% hazard -10% accessibility trait, and have the shield generator cut out just the hazard rating increase.  But that's out of scope for the sort of small plugin I'm trying to make.)
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

RawCode

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #4 on: January 15, 2019, 05:23:47 PM »

lore directly states - access to domain era technology is lost.

this is reason why you cant just spam stellar mirrors and shades everywhere and turn everything into paradise.
this is reason why people live on lifeless rocks inside hive cities.
and this is reason why all this not done ages before player emerged into world.

planetary shield is lorebreaking, it should be single use installable device, not magical acceess to domain technology, just like pforges and scores.

only decivilized and pollution should "decay" over time with options to speedup process, rest should be permanent.

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Shad

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2019, 01:04:57 AM »

lore directly states - access to domain era technology is lost.

this is reason why you cant just spam stellar mirrors and shades everywhere and turn everything into paradise.
this is reason why people live on lifeless rocks inside hive cities.
and this is reason why all this not done ages before player emerged into world.

planetary shield is lorebreaking, it should be single use installable device, not magical acceess to domain technology, just like pforges and scores.

only decivilized and pollution should "decay" over time with options to speedup process, rest should be permanent.
Domain tech (which couls seemingly turn barren words into lush gardens) is indeed lost.

But just like you can build makeshift comm relays to make up for the lost domain ones, there could be some basic life-imporving thing you could do.It will not turn barren worlds into habitable ones, but it would slightly reduce hazard rating. Some basic stellar mirrors/shades aren't that far-fetched even by modern-day early 21-st century tech.

More importantly, it will provide late-game activity and potential money/tech sink.
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SCC

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2019, 04:56:06 AM »

I would rather have specialised industries meant to combat particular conditions. Stellar shades and mirrors, domed colonies, orbital magnetic ring, the like. It's likely not happening, since terraforming (these aren't really terraforming, but close enough, apparently) technology was lost after the collapse. That should just be an excuse for those techs (or maybe some other, better techs) to be tied into quests/exploring/raiding, instead of making them nonexistent.

RawCode

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2019, 06:34:20 AM »

current implementation of hazard is:

just number that have no logic attached
just additional number that increase upkeep of colony
and one more number that decrease population growth

building that decrease hazard have equal effect compared to building that makes money and increase population growth.
as you already have method to convert money into growth, hazard reduction is just more growth

instead of altering hazard, such building should have very special effect, and ofc limited construction.
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Retry

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2019, 12:32:24 PM »

building that decrease hazard have equal effect compared to building that makes money and increase population growth.
as you already have method to convert money into growth, hazard reduction is just more growth
That isn't true.  Some buildings can produce profit via exports and thus make money.  But they (and other buildings) also have an upkeep cost modified by hazard rating, and an industry that's not making more from exports than upkeep at lv.3 probably isn't going to do so at lv.10, even when its primary purpose was to make money.  Adding additional industries or especially defenses aren't going to solve it.

Reducing hazard rating, though, would reduce upkeep on everything.  Depending on the market conditions, it can turn what was otherwise unprofitable industries into profitable ones, and even on worlds with profitable industries into lush money makers even with only a slight upkeep reduction across the board because of the profit margins.

Quote
instead of altering hazard, such building should have very special effect, and ofc limited construction.

Why would a planetary shield on a Meteor Impact world have some special effect as a very round-about way of giving a bonus to the world instead of just, well, removing the malus?

If you're talking about some other building giving a special bonus, either an already existing one or something else entirely, that's probably outside of the scope of this suggestion.
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Shad

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #9 on: January 16, 2019, 12:48:44 PM »

building that decrease hazard have equal effect compared to building that makes money and increase population growth.
as you already have method to convert money into growth, hazard reduction is just more growth
That isn't true.  Some buildings can produce profit via exports and thus make money.  But they (and other buildings) also have an upkeep cost modified by hazard rating, and an industry that's not making more from exports than upkeep at lv.3 probably isn't going to do so at lv.10, even when its primary purpose was to make money.  Adding additional industries or especially defenses aren't going to solve it.

Reducing hazard rating, though, would reduce upkeep on everything.  Depending on the market conditions, it can turn what was otherwise unprofitable industries into profitable ones, and even on worlds with profitable industries into lush money makers even with only a slight upkeep reduction across the board because of the profit margins.
The real culprit in reducing upkeep and producing lsh money makers is beta cores. Halving upkeep on expensive industry with no downsides (not to mention the extra production in the case of Alpha cores).

By contrast, turning a 250% hazards world into a 200% hazard world would be nowhere near as groundbreaking, especially if the upkeep for the terraforming building scales with colony size.
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MajorTheRed

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #10 on: January 16, 2019, 03:12:08 PM »

I like the way buildings could alter hazard rating. I remember the Jangola space station has some giant laser used to burn and repulse overgrowing jungles. A nice piece of lore which could have real mechanics in the game:

Heavy batteries could help against meteor storm.

Military base to stop those pesky decivilized dissidents

Industries could prevent cold by creating climate changes

On the other side, I think that some hazard ratings should note affect several buildings. For example, cold condition doesn't mater for your already cold space station. Dangerous lifeforms will not attack anything in space, but high gravity will attract your battlestation, etc...
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RawCode

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2019, 12:52:19 AM »

I hope you do understand that decreasing upkeep from 100k to 90k equals to producing additional 10k?

It does not matter, is your planet produce something directly or export something and goods produces elsewhere, decreasing upkeep always equals to producing more money.
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Shad

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #12 on: January 17, 2019, 12:59:44 AM »

I hope you do understand that decreasing upkeep from 100k to 90k equals to producing additional 10k?

It does not matter, is your planet produce something directly or export something and goods produces elsewhere, decreasing upkeep always equals to producing more money.

Well if the terraforming buillding itself requires 15k to upkeep, then it will be not worth it in this instance. The system could be be balanced around making the whole thing being not too profitable (or even marginally unprofitable in many cases).
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Embercloud

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #13 on: January 22, 2019, 02:29:38 AM »

Bump, this should be a thing. Solar shades and mirrors already exist in-game.
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Plantissue

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Re: Removing Planetary Features (or "Limited-Scale Terraforming")
« Reply #14 on: January 22, 2019, 03:45:45 AM »

To be honest I don't understand why decivilised is chosen to be a negative in the game. You would surely think that it's a positive, a population base that aren't much of a threat and can be assimilated.
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