Mars Mod Thread 1: Planning

[heardie]

A taste of things to come

Of course it would be overexaggerating to say these are beta

[Lemmy]

nice terrain heardie

[Plumbean]

Mars

A few Ideas maybe make it on a giantmap 256x256 where you could terra form the terrian at a slow rate.Maybe some goodie huts with advanced tech,Maybe some alien life forms,and maybe after a while super humans who where born on the plant that are Stonger or tougher than normal humans,Even after a long time of terraforming the planet new graphics that allow air breathing

[Mongoloid Cow]

The Civs included in the mod could be leaders of the space race today : Japan, USA, Russia, UK, China, Australia, Germany and France; and add more - the max number of civs is 16. You also would have to compensate for a civ or two to have a special role.

You should also have a special terraform unit from the start.

It will be extremely difficult to make it if the number of terrain-types allowed is not increased. You might have to make it after the planet is that suitable for colonisation or like the Mars Scenario in Fantastic Worlds (Civ2) if you can't increase the number of terrain.

You will also have to make it dangerous to expand into the mountainous regions/chasms - Mars is the most active planet volcanically in the solar system, and those chasms are long and deep (and stretch from near the north pole to near the south pole in some cases). The chasms could however flood full of water once the terraforming gets underway and the poles have melted, and act like rivers (could even sail on them)

A Civ could get reinforcements from their Earth mother-country. But if that country is in trouble the player/AI will have to take care of themselves for a while.

[heardie]

I think it has to be like the FW scenario to work no matter what, ie. A terraformed world

[SpaceWeasel]

Some ideas I thought of off the top of my head - I'm also very interested in this topic but I am working on my own mod at the moment.

Improvements: Solar panels (shields) Hydroponic Farm (food) Tubes (road) Maglev/monorail (rail)

Ice or water would definately be a strategic reesource. It would make for a very interesting early-game dynamic to have a building that required water/ice in the city radius to grow beyond the first size level (which should be low). Then a later tech would allow you to build something like a Permafrost Pump that could let any city grow over this initial size. Ice would have to be common but it would make the early game VERY interesting and competitive. Although it could also be unbalancing, of course.

Exploration should be important early on. Have a robotic explorer and a long-range plane that can only fly recon.

What about barbarians? Here's an idea: immobile "space worms" with a high defense value that you would have to clear out. Or not =P.

Hope these idea help, I'll post more if I think of them

[HardWay]

Terrain--> Ocean

Just a quick note; I recently played a game where I dropped a nuke 1 square away from a city. The terrain at ground zero was grassland, and was converted to a little lake (sea/coast square) afterward. So maybe there is a way to convert land---> ocean implicit in the system.

Nice work on the beta terrain, heardie. Looks rocky & forbidding. Tip; You might want to lower the value down to something more similar to the civ tiles, to make it easier on the eyes.

[HardWay]

I'm glad to see that somebody doing a mars mod! Here's my random ideas on the subject, after reading through this thread;

The initial game could be very food-intensive; All native terrain produces zero food until you build 'agro-domes' (ie farms), and then only 2 or 3 food. Then, as others on this thread have desribed, building a terraformer facility produces 'pollution', and global warming would convert rocky un-productive terrain to highly productive grassland stuff. Agro-domes no longer needed.

Alot of the functions of the 'worker' could be broken out in to separate units. Say, for example, a worker robot unit: can build roads and mines, but cannot add to cities, and costs no population to build. (So, if population growth is limited at first, you wouldn't need to keep sacrificing population units to develop.)

You could also set the 'aqueduct' limit to something really low, meaning that you MUST have access to the 'fresh water' or 'polar ice' resource in order to grow to any useful size.
Rivers could be 'underground water deposits'. Also, 'rivers' could be changed to 'underground water deposits'.

I like the idea of some kind of rapidly appearing and disappearing resource. If doing a dune mod, this would be 'spice swells' that appear for a three or four turns, are outrageously productive (like 10 gold or something), then disappear. You would then truck around some little prospector unit that can build a colony on it... hunting these things down. Maybe a 'kelp tide' or something in the ocean... produces mad food for a few rounds, then dissappears...

The 'disease from jungles', could be increased in frequency and changed to 'sandstorms' or 'radiation storm', to reflect the hostile environment. Occurs only in the native martian dustplain areas, maybe, and thereby decreases with terraforming.


Units:----------------------------------------------
Survey satelite station: immobile unit, which can only do recon missions, and cannot be re-based, global range.

Ground Based Laser tower: immobile air defense unit, does air superiority at long range, artillery bombards at short range.

Orbital Laser Artillery station: immobile unit, global range.

Colony hopper: a non-immobile helicopter unit. Like the little lander thing in _2001_ . Can pick small things up, and drop them off. Can be captured. Available early in the game. (I am always irked by space colonization sims that assume that although we can put a self-sufficient population on mars, we would just drop them off with their luggage and no other useful equipment.) Can be used for exploration, AND for trucking stuff around.

Somebody above suggested a 'terrorist unit'; Here's an idea how to do it: It would be a land-based infantry unit with stealth, and could make 'precision bombing' attacks, at a radius of 1, as well as have some minimal-moderate attack and defend values. The point is, they can blow up buildings, and destroy infrastructure, then run away. (Also, disengage/retreat, and all terrain as roads would make sense.)You could also make it be 'hidden nationality', like the privateer, so you could do things covertly. Ahem, like in real life. Requires 'terrorist cell' building to construct. Available only to certain factions or gov't types, maybe. Not sure if this will get strange with air superiority,... perhaps somebody could try it?

Buildings & Wonders:----------------------------------------------

Maybe the 'aqueduct' blg is 'water sythesizer', with a very high upkeep cost. Generates H20 out of the air and assorted rocks.

Terraforming station. Produces Terraforming (ie pollution)

Atmosphere processor: big fusion station. Produces an immense amount of Terraforming (ie pollution), but can melt down. Think of the big thing in _Aliens_.

'Cloning Vats' Wonder. Allows you to build 'clone workers', which cost no population to build. But are in all respects identical to a worker, and can be added to cities. So, you can simply BUILD your population to the limit of your food supply. Or, for whatever purpose you chose to put them... (Yeah, I know its a rip off of SMAC... but this makes a little more sense.)

[Lemmy]

great ideas, i like that terrorist idea, maybe i'll try it this weekend. The early helicopter will also be very usefull.

but i don't see how the cloning vats wonder would work.

[SpaceWeasel]

Basically it would be like a worker with low production cost and no population cost, that could add to cities. However, I don't think it would necessarily work b/c I think the add to city command refers back to the population cost command. What you could do is have it act like the Longevity wonder (+2 pop instead of 1). Also, I don't think you can tie building a specific unit to having a specific building...

[heardie]

Terrain

'Finished' one set of terrain graphics

[heardie]

Screenshot:

[Jer8m8]

Nice!! But one thing: shouldn't the beaches be red?

[heardie]

Probably, but could you be bothered changing them all?

[Jer8m8]

Good point. I can't do a thing with graphics