Cities without city radius, self regulating economy, wealth

[DeathByTheSword]

and that is just the reason i like crawlers more

[Vultur]

Supply Base Idea
Crawler:
Population limit: 10000 people. Need at least 1000 people.
It' a big convoy that can voyage to find a good harvesting site, then can settle here and begin to harvest & send to the nearest base. You can decide to turn your crawler in a Supply Base or to move in other places. Needs food Support.

Supply Base:
Population limit: 20000 people. Need at least 5000 people.
Cannot be moved, can harvest & produce Supplies (medicinals,spare parts), can supply all near units (1 or 2 tiles of radius). Can be turned in a Base. Does not need supplies (turn part of harvested nutrients in food.)

Base:
Populaton limits:none. Need at least 10000 people. Can harvest resources in its radius & produce anything. Can supply near units (from 1 to 10 tiles of radius)

Comments?

[Leland]

In SMAC, crawlers were made available by industrial automation (right?), which meant basically robots and such. So, if the technologies in Stella are even closely following that route, I am not so sure why they'd be a need for thousands of people operating them.

[Vultur]

Originally posted by Leland
In SMAC, crawlers were made available by industrial automation (right?), which meant basically robots and such. So, if the technologies in Stella are even closely following that route, I am not so sure why they'd be a need for thousands of people operating them.

Yes, but in SMAC crawlers are overpowering. With a the necessity of population, you cannot have 200+ crawlers after 30-40 turns of production. Consider that you must crawl an area of 40000 square Km (200 Km x 200 Km) and transport havested resources to a base and that if in SMAC you can crawl one resource type in this game you can crawl all resources. An other limit is that you cannot crawl everywhere you want, the crawler can transport must be at a limited distance from the nearest base (maximum 10 tiles)
I think that this system is more balanced.

[Leland]

It probably is more balanced, but I don't think it is very realistic... besides it depends very much on the resources that are extracted, how many people are needed... if you have a single bore hole, you'll probably do away with a lot less operators than, say, if the whole 40,000 sqkm area is filled with farm lands (but that's kind of besides the point).

To me, "crawlers" as outlined above are not really crawlers in SMAC sense (though they may fill similar gameplay role). They're small bases, colonies, or something like that. How about "outpost"?

EDIT: If I was in another planet, and wanted to establish a supply convoy from point A to point B, regardless of how many people are needed to operate the equipment, I would first send the construction crew to build the infrastructure needed, and only then move in the people... I would not send thousands of people wandering in the wilderness.

[Straybow]

If I was in another planet, and wanted to establish a supply convoy from point A to point B, regardless of how many people are needed to operate the equipment, I would first send the construction crew to build the infrastructure needed, and only then move in the people... I would not send thousands of people wandering in the wilderness.

I believe on Earth we use something called a pipe. It is described as a long hole with metal (or concrete, etc) wrapped around it. It's a very clever idea, wrapping a hole so that things can be poured through it.
Another forgotten technology is called a railroad. First they lay rails of base metal (instead of high-tech magnetic materials) down on the ground to wherever they want to go. Then they put big boxes on wheels (instead of high-tech EM field generators) and pull them along these rails. Amazing what one can do without fancy gizmos when one's mind is put to the challenge.

[Vultur]

Originally posted by Leland
It probably is more balanced, but I don't think it is very realistic...

Also sending 300.000+ people (30 or more factions) on a starship at 1/10 of the speed of light and fall on an unknow alien planet (but Earth-like) and don't try to terraform Mars (nearer and well known...) and lose all contact with the Earth is not very realistic...

They're small bases, colonies, or something like that. How about "outpost"?

Call them Outposts, Colonies or Supply Bases, the idea is almost the same... having a quasi-base that harvest resources in a certain tile.

[Straybow]

Well, for SMAC the factions are only 1,000 each (remnants of 10k original colonists). With that scale in mind things change drastically… See pop/unit scales in SMAC in another thread.

[Straybow]

Food and Crawlers

Originally posted by Blake
I'm not entirely sure what your saying the ramifications on gameplay should be. I would actually advocate removing food entirely from player managment (ie no food resource) because growing and distributing food is so essential that people would always do it...

With regards to growth, I think a "cost of expansion" variable would be useful, some sites simply arent suited to city expansion...

I would still like some sort of food supply and stuff.. (if only to avoid the cries of dismay from those who have a background of playing TBS games with food....) and thats why I reccomend the self regulating economy thing, it could very easily be extended so that food is also grown in a base tile or that you could build facilities like hydroponic farms...

I had said, "The tiles are likely to be 50+ miles across, so unless the soils are useless there will be more than enough land arable at 1-4k/mi²… So the cost of food will depend on environmental hostility but the percentage of population devoted to growing and processing and shipping food will be 10-15%. It should be generalized so that player sees only the cost and tweaking is rarely of any use."

Definitely have food as a resource, but it should be managed automatically as a percentage of overall productivity. The percentage would depend on tech, environmental restrictions (open land, greenhousing, climate-controlled, or sealed vs toxic/vacuum), and a policy on per capita consumption (and allowance for draught, pestilence or other disaster or wastage) set by the player (similar to CtP2) and/or SE.

I wouldn't want the player to have to dedicate construction queue time to farming structures or infrastructure any more than we want to have to build each housing development or apartment highrise. Both should be automated not by calculating some simulated economy but assumed in simple proportions.

Food produced outside the base tile would primarily be luxuries rather than staples; and then it is a strategic decision to invest resources for happiness. A start-up economy can't afford to waste resources setting up, keeping up, and taking up bulk staples from distant acreage, doubly so in inhospitable climates.

If the soil (across the entire 50 or 100 mile tile) is lousy for growing food, build somewhere else. If you have no choice and need a sealed environment it would be cheaper to truck good soil in to your base than to build a distant mini-base with all its maintenance costs and problems just to grow some crops.

I would rather have tile production be specific: quarrying, mineral mining, forestry, non-food crops (such as rubber, cotton, flax, etc). You go outside the base only for something you can't get or do inside (or immediately adjacent to) the base. Essentially everything produced outside the base tile is like sending out a SMAC crawler (or a pipe-/rail- linked station).

( All of this based on simple extrapolation of 20th cen tech, no tissue vats blah, blah, blah )

[Vultur]

Well, for SMAC the factions are only 1,000 each (remnants of 10k original colonists).

I think it would be seriously difficult to run a base with only 1000 people: try to think how many thing you must produce to live in a good way on the Earth... In addition consider that there is a minimum number of people to permit a continous population expansion without need of immigration.

Food produced outside the base tile would primarily be luxuries rather than staples; and then it is a strategic decision to invest resources for happiness. A start-up economy can't afford to waste resources setting up, keeping up, and taking up bulk staples from distant acreage, doubly so in inhospitable climates.

My idea is to allow colony pods/crawlers later then the very first years: when you must settle a territory the first goal is not expansion (building new settlements), but seek for resources and organization of the first settlement, like many RTS games (Starcraft, Warcraft, Empire Earth...)
The player start only with a small group of colonist (10k), some supplies and one scouting unit (100 people, non-combat, can move 2 tiles) to explore surrounding area. The second base can be founded after 10-15 turns (not after 3-6 turns), when the HQ is enough big to support a colonization mission.

NOTE: 10-15 turns is not totally realistic, 25-30 should be more correct, but a very slow expansion can frustrate every player.

[Straybow]

I think it would be seriously difficult to run a base with only 1000 people: try to think how many thing you must produce to live in a good way on the Earth... In addition consider that there is a minimum number of people to permit a continous population expansion without need of immigration.

Yes, that's the point. As long as you begin from the Help I've Fallen And I Can't Get Up angle you start with precious little resources, especially personnel. The ability to make equipment or vehicles is negligible (unless you can fashion machines from bamboo like Gilligan's Island).

If you haven't crashed or whatever you should have a complete database of technology, skilled people of all kinds, and basic machine tools to make manufacturing equipment for all your needs. Communications, prefab satellites of various types, shuttles, and a robotic asteroid/comet mining unit or two might be expected. The challenge is to survive while building your infrastructure.

Why would anyone waste the tremendous expense of shipping thousands of colonists by not equipping them for success?