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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: [0.97a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v9.0.7)  (Read 1070250 times)

boggled

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #750 on: August 01, 2020, 10:23:09 AM »


The below edits to your code should result in only the CampaignTerrainAPI that the player fleet is located inside of being deleted. I haven't tested it, so you might have to make minor changes to get it to compile. Hope this helps!

Code: java
runcode SectorEntityToken fleet = Global.getSector().getPlayerFleet();
    List<SectorEntityToken> sectorEntityTokens = fleet.getContainingLocation().getAllEntities();

    for(int i = 0; i < sectoryEntityTokens.size(); i++)
    {
        if(sectorEntityTokens.get(i) instanceof CampaignTerrainAPI)
        {
            if(((CampaignTerrainAPI)sectorEntityTokens.get(i)).getPlugin().containsEntity(fleet))
            {
            fleet.getContainingLocation().removeEntity((SectorEntityToken)sectorEntityTokens.get(i));
            }
        }
    }
I can't get this to run in the console but if this does, would this script delete non-volatile debris fields? Or is it impossible even with power of scripts?

Code
runcode SectorEntityToken fleet = Global.getSector().getPlayerFleet();
        List<SectorEntityToken> sectorEntityTokens = fleet.getContainingLocation().getAllEntities();

        for(int i = 0; i < sectorEntityTokens.size(); i++)
        {
            if(sectorEntityTokens.get(i) instanceof CampaignTerrainAPI)
            {
                if(((CampaignTerrainAPI)sectorEntityTokens.get(i)).getPlugin().containsEntity(fleet))
                {
                    fleet.getContainingLocation().removeEntity((SectorEntityToken)sectorEntityTokens.get(i));
                }
            }
        }

I just tested the above slightly edited code. It should be able to remove any debris field the player fleet is located inside of.
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Mondaymonkey

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #751 on: August 01, 2020, 11:12:47 AM »

@Boggled, do you remember ancient suggestion about research stations?

I think, Serenitis just proposed here approximate mechanic they can use.

Copypaste from there
An alternative means of 'researching' could be to have 2 separate streams running off the same infrastructure.

Infrastructure
This might take the form of an industry with a non-trivial level of upkeep, and an input of crew (to represent the researchers).
From this you would have the 2 streams of research.
The 'general' stream which is running constantly.
And the 'specific' stream which runs only when set by the player.

'General' stream
When the research industry first goes online, the player is prompted to select an area to research.
This will be one of the the stats that are shared accross all ships - such as hull points, armour, speed, flux capacity etc.
The research will then tick away until complete, at which point the player will be prompted to select another project.
The length of time this would take to complete would be on the order of weeks.

Each 'level' of completion adds +x% to that stat for all ships owned by the player empire.
These projects can be repeated as many times as desired.
However, every completed level of a project will increase the time 'cost' of each subsequent level of that specific project. So even though there is no hard cap on the number of times the player can research a particular project, there will be a soft cap base on time invested.

'Specific' stream
The specific stream remains inactive until explicitly invoked by the player. The project will run until completion and then sit idle until invoked again.
In order to start a specific project the player will need to own a working heavy industry, and a have a learned blueprint for the ship type they wish to modify.

The player will first pick a specific ship type to modify from the heavy industry blueprint list, and then select a specific attribute to improve.
(There could be a greater choice of attributes to mofify here than via the general route.)
Upon selecting an attribute, the player will be presented with a 'cost' in order to proceed. This will be a small assortment of commodities, which will be removed from either the player inventory or colony storage when the player accepts.

The project itself will run for a number of days, and will improve stat y by +z%. But only for that specific type of ship.
Each time a particular ship is improved, any further 'specific' project related to that class of ship will become more expensive both in time and resources.
The increase in 'cost' would be a similar soft cap to the general stream.

Considerations
As a rule, the improvements gained via the 'specific' route will be more substantial than those gained via the 'general' route. z > x.

All improvements are fully retroactive - which means that any researched improvement will apply to any ship the player 'owns' immediately. Same as how certain skills apply stat modifiers to owned ships, but globally throughout the player faction rather than just the player fleet.
Having to build new ships to take advantage of research would be more 'realistic' but would be a considerable increase in micromanagement, and would undermine any features which might be encouraging the player to retain ships for roleplay/story progression purposes.

The ability to arbitrarily improve all a ship's stats may be 'too good'. In which case it could be possible to introduce choices insomuch as if you choose to improve a you lose the ability to improve b.
This would be akin to 'specialising' your faction.
It would also require some careful consideration in order to avoid trivial choices.
[close]

Off course, it was suggested for the general gameplay, not mod, but with slight polishing and balance, it could be a thing.
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boggled

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #752 on: August 01, 2020, 12:10:01 PM »

@Boggled, do you remember ancient suggestion about research stations?

I think, Serenitis just proposed here approximate mechanic they can use.

Copypaste from there
An alternative means of 'researching' could be to have 2 separate streams running off the same infrastructure.

Infrastructure
This might take the form of an industry with a non-trivial level of upkeep, and an input of crew (to represent the researchers).
From this you would have the 2 streams of research.
The 'general' stream which is running constantly.
And the 'specific' stream which runs only when set by the player.

'General' stream
When the research industry first goes online, the player is prompted to select an area to research.
This will be one of the the stats that are shared accross all ships - such as hull points, armour, speed, flux capacity etc.
The research will then tick away until complete, at which point the player will be prompted to select another project.
The length of time this would take to complete would be on the order of weeks.

Each 'level' of completion adds +x% to that stat for all ships owned by the player empire.
These projects can be repeated as many times as desired.
However, every completed level of a project will increase the time 'cost' of each subsequent level of that specific project. So even though there is no hard cap on the number of times the player can research a particular project, there will be a soft cap base on time invested.

'Specific' stream
The specific stream remains inactive until explicitly invoked by the player. The project will run until completion and then sit idle until invoked again.
In order to start a specific project the player will need to own a working heavy industry, and a have a learned blueprint for the ship type they wish to modify.

The player will first pick a specific ship type to modify from the heavy industry blueprint list, and then select a specific attribute to improve.
(There could be a greater choice of attributes to mofify here than via the general route.)
Upon selecting an attribute, the player will be presented with a 'cost' in order to proceed. This will be a small assortment of commodities, which will be removed from either the player inventory or colony storage when the player accepts.

The project itself will run for a number of days, and will improve stat y by +z%. But only for that specific type of ship.
Each time a particular ship is improved, any further 'specific' project related to that class of ship will become more expensive both in time and resources.
The increase in 'cost' would be a similar soft cap to the general stream.

Considerations
As a rule, the improvements gained via the 'specific' route will be more substantial than those gained via the 'general' route. z > x.

All improvements are fully retroactive - which means that any researched improvement will apply to any ship the player 'owns' immediately. Same as how certain skills apply stat modifiers to owned ships, but globally throughout the player faction rather than just the player fleet.
Having to build new ships to take advantage of research would be more 'realistic' but would be a considerable increase in micromanagement, and would undermine any features which might be encouraging the player to retain ships for roleplay/story progression purposes.

The ability to arbitrarily improve all a ship's stats may be 'too good'. In which case it could be possible to introduce choices insomuch as if you choose to improve a you lose the ability to improve b.
This would be akin to 'specialising' your faction.
It would also require some careful consideration in order to avoid trivial choices.
[close]

Off course, it was suggested for the general gameplay, not mod, but with slight polishing and balance, it could be a thing.

I don't like the idea of permanent, universal stat improvements for all the player's ships. Once the research has been completed enough times, the player's ships will be substantially stronger than the enemy ships. Combat would be become trivially easy and boring if the enemy ships didn't gain stats as well. I could see research that has both positive and negative effects (ex. gain +20% speed but suffer -20% flux capacity), but I think hullmods are a better way to customize your fleet as you can apply them to individual ships rather than the entire fleet at once.

Starsector is not a 4X game, it's Mount and Blade in space. I don't think researching upgrades is an appropriate mechanic for this genre. I think a better idea would be to tie new abilities/perks to a "renown" system analogous to how it works in Mount and Blade.
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Mondaymonkey

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #753 on: August 01, 2020, 12:28:43 PM »

It was worth trying.

Then, maybe, unlock features via research? I feel like it's strange to have eisen division and arcology project from start. Most of the structures and terraforming projects can be initially locked and obtained by reserching. Fair?
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boggled

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #754 on: August 01, 2020, 12:41:58 PM »

It was worth trying.

Then, maybe, unlock features via research? I feel like it's strange to have eisen division and arcology project from start. Most of the structures and terraforming projects can be initially locked and obtained by reserching. Fair?

I think the Eisen Division and the Kletka Simulator are the only structures that could reasonably be locked behind research, and they're both effectively "locked" behind the requirement to have a supply of domain-era artifacts.

I don't want to implement research just for the sake of doing it - it needs to be done in a way that actually improves gameplay. I think it's just not a good mechanic for this genre of game.
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Chikanuk

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #755 on: August 01, 2020, 12:57:04 PM »

About hydroponics - this will break balance in current state of game economy. It will not, only if every colony need much more food and can face much dire consequences if left without any food for long time.

About research... It will be very, very cool addition. But IMHO, to being good, it requires a lot of effort and really hard to balance.
Right now, IMHO, most obvious options here is locking some buildings behind it, and maybe feature to unlock BP with this. Maybe via reverse engineering - like you bring ship hull to research station, and this will have some chances to give you BP of this ship (ofc if player even allowed to have bp of this ship) with cost of time, money and ship hull. But this too seems like very difficult thing to make.
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stormturmoil

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #756 on: August 01, 2020, 01:06:23 PM »

Is it possible to require a specific item besides just Credits, as a prerequisite?
Because then you could Gate it behind something that currently doesn't have much use: Survey Reports.

As an alternative to selling them for cash, use Survey Reports as a currency to buy Terraforming Technique progress

Not sure if this is possible, but it seems to address the issues of getting Terraforming Structures from the get go, and provides another, logical use for Surveying.
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Mondaymonkey

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #757 on: August 01, 2020, 01:28:46 PM »

It will be very, very cool addition.

Exactly! But balance is the root of evil here. What ever you give to player via research - it will make it more powerful, while AI will not get any. It would be great to have factional "research doctrine", that will grant factions a bonuses, player can potentially get, but a) it will make factions stronger to player in early game, as he didn't able to do research till the mid-late game to be in par. b) That is something far beyond this (or any) mod should implement, as potentially ruin the gameplay balance, IMO.

Quote
and maybe feature to unlock BP with this. Maybe via reverse engineering - like you bring ship hull to research station, and this will have some chances to give you BP of this ship (ofc if player even allowed to have bp of this ship) with cost of time, money and ship hull. But this too seems like very difficult thing to make.

I don't think this is hard to make. Just an industry, that create custom ship storage and monthly check if there any hulls among stored, that is not in known ships list and has blueprints (and variant, and default ship role). If any - first one in a list is removed and reverse engineering process started. Duration is determined with a hull size, hull style and rarity (1 if nothing). At the end - blueprints added to a gathering point or just ship added to known list.

However, that is a thing I am not sure it is relevant. And even if is, damn hard to balance - any not overpowered solution will be painful to player.

Quote
Is it possible to require a specific item besides just Credits, as a prerequisite?

If we here already©, it would be fair for advanced industries (kletka simulator and eisen division, or some arcology structures) requires a specific rare drop item similar to NF to function, so player can have only limited amount of them, instead of spam-abusing available now. DEA can not limit the number of industries, as single vast ruins archeology can supply literally infinite amount of DEA structures.
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boggled

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #758 on: August 01, 2020, 01:41:42 PM »

Is it possible to require a specific item besides just Credits, as a prerequisite?
Because then you could Gate it behind something that currently doesn't have much use: Survey Reports.

As an alternative to selling them for cash, use Survey Reports as a currency to buy Terraforming Technique progress

Not sure if this is possible, but it seems to address the issues of getting Terraforming Structures from the get go, and provides another, logical use for Surveying.

This could be a good idea if the player had to survey specific planets with existing terraforming projects to unlock them (ex. needs to survey Ismara to get Ismara's Sling). The problem is that players with random sector won't be able to use this feature, and players who aren't already aware of the lore may completely miss the planets in Penelope's Star. It will also be difficult to communicate this requirement to players who haven't read the mod guide. Lastly, players with modded factions may be confused why surveying planets from those mods doesn't unlock the terraforming projects to copy them.

About research... It will be very, very cool addition. But IMHO, to being good, it requires a lot of effort and really hard to balance.
Right now, IMHO, most obvious options here is locking some buildings behind it, and maybe feature to unlock BP with this. Maybe via reverse engineering - like you bring ship hull to research station, and this will have some chances to give you BP of this ship (ofc if player even allowed to have bp of this ship) with cost of time, money and ship hull. But this too seems like very difficult thing to make.

This would actually be possible to make! I could have a "research lab" building that adds an extra storage space to the planet, and placing ships/weapons/LPCs in it will allow the player to start a project to reverse engineer them to create a blueprint. The main problem with this is it will obviate the need for the player to go out into the fringe to search for loot, and the player can already obtain everything from the Prism Free Port if they're using default settings with Nexerelin. It's probably not worth the effort to implement relative to the number of players who would actually enjoy using it. I wouldn't use it myself as I think exploring and salvaging in the fringe is one of the more enjoyable parts of this game.

If we here already©, it would be fair for advanced industries (kletka simulator and eisen division, or some arcology structures) requires a specific rare drop item similar to NF to function, so player can have only limited amount of them, instead of spam-abusing available now. DEA can not limit the number of industries, as single vast ruins archeology can supply literally infinite amount of DEA structures.

If you enable the temperature-based upkeep for the Kletka Simulator, you will find that it cannot be spammed everywhere anymore. Spamming is less of a problem for the Eisen Division because it gets built, terraforming happens, then it gets shut down.

The arcology buildings mostly require AI cores (and a nanoforge for the pheromone splicer) to really become powerful. This will limit the player from spamming them until they get very rich in the end game.
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Mondaymonkey

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #759 on: August 01, 2020, 01:52:10 PM »

Quote
If you enable the temperature-based upkeep for the Kletka Simulator

Oh, shi~

How can I miss that feature???
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SirHartley

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #760 on: August 01, 2020, 01:55:24 PM »

Quote from: Chikanuklink=topic=17094.msg295483#msg295483 date=1596314502
About research... It will be very, very cool addition. But IMHO, to being good, it requires a lot of effort and really hard to balance.
Right now, IMHO, most obvious options here is locking some buildings behind it, and maybe feature to unlock BP with this. Maybe via reverse engineering - like you bring ship hull to research station, and this will have some chances to give you BP of this ship (ofc if player even allowed to have bp of this ship) with cost of time, money and ship hull. But this too seems like very difficult thing to make.
This would actually be possible to make! I could have a "research lab" building that adds an extra storage space to the planet, and placing ships/weapons/LPCs in it will allow the player to start a project to reverse engineer them to create a blueprint. The main problem with this is it will obviate the need for the player to go out into the fringe to search for loot, and the player can already obtain everything from the Prism Free Port if they're using default settings with Nexerelin. It's probably not worth the effort to implement relative to the number of players who would actually enjoy using it. I wouldn't use it myself as I think exploring and salvaging in the fringe is one of the more enjoyable parts of this game.

This is an upcoming Industrial.Evolution Structure that is finished in Dev, and is currently being tested. The main problem here is mod support - authors have to whitelist their ships, which is a slow process.
It's not un-fun, and a viable alternative to just flat out buying stuff from nex.
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Mondaymonkey

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #761 on: August 01, 2020, 02:03:42 PM »

Quote
The main problem with this is it will obviate the need for the player to go out into the fringe to search for loot

There are simple solution for that particular problem. Make reverse engineering more restrictive. Like requiring a specific artifact/data/unicorn's horn to do the single project. and to obtain it - repeatable bar event with mission directly to the fringe with no more information, than "search somewhere in constellation X". So player can not reverse  engineering spam capable.

Not sure it is a suggestion for TASC. We are building astropolises and terraform space boulders here, not hacking DRM.

Wouldn't mind to have this in another mod, tho'.

EDIT:

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boggled

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #762 on: August 01, 2020, 03:04:20 PM »

Quote from: Chikanuklink=topic=17094.msg295483#msg295483 date=1596314502
About research... It will be very, very cool addition. But IMHO, to being good, it requires a lot of effort and really hard to balance.
Right now, IMHO, most obvious options here is locking some buildings behind it, and maybe feature to unlock BP with this. Maybe via reverse engineering - like you bring ship hull to research station, and this will have some chances to give you BP of this ship (ofc if player even allowed to have bp of this ship) with cost of time, money and ship hull. But this too seems like very difficult thing to make.
This would actually be possible to make! I could have a "research lab" building that adds an extra storage space to the planet, and placing ships/weapons/LPCs in it will allow the player to start a project to reverse engineer them to create a blueprint. The main problem with this is it will obviate the need for the player to go out into the fringe to search for loot, and the player can already obtain everything from the Prism Free Port if they're using default settings with Nexerelin. It's probably not worth the effort to implement relative to the number of players who would actually enjoy using it. I wouldn't use it myself as I think exploring and salvaging in the fringe is one of the more enjoyable parts of this game.

This is an upcoming Industrial.Evolution Structure that is finished in Dev, and is currently being tested. The main problem here is mod support - authors have to whitelist their ships, which is a slow process.
It's not un-fun, and a viable alternative to just flat out buying stuff from nex.

That's great to hear. I think reverse engineering would fit much better in your mod than mine.

How come you don't allow the player to learn any ship unless the mod author blacklists it? This would seem to cut down on the amount of work you have to do by quite a bit.
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SirHartley

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #763 on: August 01, 2020, 03:22:18 PM »

Less work upfront - definitely. I had a blacklist planned initially, but it also causes problems - what about stuff like blade breakers? What about the recently revived Templars? I'd have to run after dumpster fires manually blacklisting all the stuff that's broken in player hands, and probably end up with more work in total.
With a blacklist, I am also forcing other mod authors to take action to prevent severe balance issues/keep their vision of the mod, which is not very nice, and causes bad blood.

The whitelist system allows mod authors to take part in this if they want to, and to not, if they don't.
I agree that this takes away from player experience - but I hope that authors will implement the lists, and with time, the system will become what players expect of it.

(also whitelisting is literally adding the ship id to a .csv, which is easy enough for even tech illiterate people to do)
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Chikanuk

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Re: [0.9.1a] Terraforming and Station Construction (v5.4.1)
« Reply #764 on: August 01, 2020, 03:53:27 PM »

Great news about your mod!
About white list - maybe you made it possible for player to add ships to white list too? For example if someone really wants to got BB blueprints this way - why not? This is a single player sandbox anyway.

About limitation - I think one of valid option is adding chance to succeed. Maybe based on player tech skill three and\or AI core attached to industry? And if you fail - you just lost hull for nothing. I know for some people this will be extremely frustrating even with 5% chance to fail, but this can be fixed with simple "made reverse-engeneering have 100% chance to succeed no matter what" option in settings.


But in general science and research can add much more things.
For example terraforming - it can made such way, what you need to search for technology in terraforming stations and ruins, and after you find it - you need to insert it to research insitute and made proper research, what require money and time. This is also make much more sense than "only play know how to terraform".
Same way for more advanced buildings, like SirHartley Supercomputer and boggled Kletka.
Or maybe some over mod autors can hide some ships, fighters and weapons behind this?
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