The moment you've all been waiting for!

[Xentropy]

Er, like, all 3 of you, anyway.

I've got plenty of time to mess with the edits today, so I'm shooting for bigbang tomorrow noon PDT (3pm eastern, 2 central, subtract an hour if your locale doesn't use daylight savings). May even manage late tonight if people want.

I should be posting in a few hours with the full list of edits. I may even add ships later midgame, but any current ships won't be modified since that can mess with things (it works just fine, but resale values can make things weird).

Since a few have said they'll be busy and unable to play seriously until this school semester ends, we may end up rebanging in just a few weeks, or perhaps putting another game with the same (or tweaked for further balance) edits up then. So depending on how many players get in and how the game goes, this could just be a practice/test sort of game to see how the edits go. Still, please play seriously no matter how it turns out, and give me feedback on the edits!

Game is very customizable. Not all may be as it appears. ;>

[Wittlich]

[burbel]

Looking forward to it, and getting it tomorrow will be fine - I don't get home from work till around 7-8 anyway. Bring it on!

[Xentropy]

Hehe edits are taking longer than I thought... the planets, I feel, are the least balanced thing in the game, so I'm spending a great deal of time on them...

There are at least two considerations..

1. As it is now, there are 3 useful planet types for various reasons, so I'm trying to give every planet SOME strength to counter its weakness. Only the class U will likely remain pretty worthless.

2. The current planets aren't very realistic. Total population of a class M less than the population JUST mining ore on a volcanic world? Sheesh!

I'm also adding at least one new planet type, Gaian, which is basically a utopian paradise. Highest possible population limits, but mediocre production. Who wants to WORK when you can enjoy the weather? ;> (Org prod is still quite good, since it basically represents farming. When everything is rolling and green, it's pretty farmworthy.)

Still hoping for a tomorrow rebang, but it may be later than noon. Since Burbel works until 5 or 6 my time, maybe I'll shoot for a 5pm bang.

I may not have time to do nice ANSI's of the stuff I add, but I can always shove that in later. Full documentation of the edits will be posted here anyway.

[aeturneus]

Originally posted by Wittlich

You said it

Looks like I will have to make some new strategies...

How about Volcanic/Gaseous planet rushing?

Can't wait to nuke a Utopia with 60 billion odd people

Wait... that's a little insane... i must leave now

[Xentropy]

I have finally bottomed out on planet settings, and here is all the relevant information in the best way I can present it given I can't make a very good table.

Ah, good, the CODE vB will make it easier.

            /Max pop (k)\ /--- Prd/col ---\ /-Storage(k)\ /-Days to Cit Lvl-\ Hab Haz
Class Title |Ore Org Equ| |Ore Org Equ Fig| |Ore Org Equ| | 1  2  3  4  5  6|  %   %
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  M   Earth  400 400 400     5   7  13  10   400 300 200    4  4  5 10  5 15  100   2
  K   Dsert   60  60  60     3  50  50   5   100  10  10    6  5  8  5  4  8   96   4
  O   Ocean  200 200 200    20   2 100  15    50  1k  10    6  5  8  5  4  8   96   4
  L   Mount  100 100 100     2  10  15  15   250  50  50    2  5  5  8  5 12   96   6
  C   Glcal   60  60  60    10  40   5   8   100  10  50    5  5  7  5  4  8   84  10
  H   Vlcnc  100   0   0     1   0   0  50    1k  10  10    4  5  8 12  5 18   80  14
  U   Gseus    2   2   2     0   0   0   0    10  10  10    3  3  2  8  4  5   76  16
  A   Gaian   1k  1k  1k    25   3  20  15   200 10k 500    5  5  6 11  6 16  100   0

Couple of notes for reading the chart: Remember, maximum production is at half max pop (after that you start overcrowding). Fig prod/col is really production per unit of other stuff produced. Hab and haz %ages are habitability and hazard level for the planet. Basically whether colonies grow or shrink and by how much over time. All those values are defaults with doubled danger. i.e. default class K is 2% haz and 98% hab, I changed it to 4% haz and 96% hab, default class H is 7% haz and 90% hab, I changed it to 14% haz and 80% hab. Depending on what real effect this has on the game, I may change them back, but since in my play experience I haven't seen populations die any significant amount anywhere (unless you're dumb enough to put colonists on a volcanic into org production or something like that).

And a quick pros/cons if you don't want to crunch the numbers yourself:

(A) Gaian worlds produce the most organics and equipment by far, bar none, per day. IF you can manage to max them out at the 500k colonists needed per production group.

(M) Earth worlds are pretty average. Nice pop and not bad production levels; can produce one hell of a lot of fighters once maxed (over 10k a day), but aren't the easiest things to max, either.

(K) Desert worlds produce the most fighters PER CAPITA of any other world. Up to 30k colonists in ore production will build 1 fighter per 15 colonists.

(O) Oceanic worlds are basically stock. I used them as a baseline, basing max populations off of this world type somewhat. Rather than balance down class O's, I tried to balance up the other types.

(L) Mountainous worlds have quite good production levels and remain the fastest productive world to build citadels. (Notice the qualifier "productive"? Check out class U's for the ultimate in speed.)

(C) Glacial worlds are the best per capita equipment producers. Could make for very profitable worlds with the proper care.

(H) Volcanic worlds are fairly close to stock. I removed the equipment production capability no one used anyway and that's it.

(U) Gaseous worlds are still worthless, though they now build citadels at a very fast rate. Expensive to do, and gives you a citadeled planet which needs all resources trucked in, not to mention a pathetic max ore level, but I guess I can see some strategies to using them (unlike stock gaseous worlds). Class U's also come with 200 of each resource sitting on the planet (call it a rebate of your gen torp cost ;>).

So, how's it look, guys?

[Wittlich]

Looks good on paper Xentropy...but the REAL opinion will occur once the game is banged.

[Xentropy]

Definitely true as always. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, and no game design survives first contact with the players ;>

Still, hopefully it's at least a good starting point to tweak from in future rebangs, ya know? Gotta start somewhere, and starting from something that looks good on paper is better than nothing hehe

So after a good night's sleep, all I've got left to edit is add the upper level good ships, then I think we're good to go. Finding good XP requirements for those ships will be difficult, since I've never seen a good player try to GAIN experience before. Evils try, but their busts keep them down; goods have no built-in experience loss but seek it out to stay fedsafe. So it's hard to say how high high is exactly when it comes to XP for a good.

A few more of the settings for the game which I've already decided upon:

999 sectors
480 turns/day (20/hr)
50% port density
No new player planets
2 max planets per sector
3 max traders on a corp
Starting figs 50, creds 1000, holds 30
15 days to inactivity deletion
Fedshiplimit 3
Photons 20 sec
Cloak fail 10%
NavHaz dispersion 10%
Ship delay half
75% planetary trade agreements
Port regen 20%
4 day bust clears
Planetary transporters 200k, upgrades 50k
Gentorps 80k
Atomic dets 60k (ya think I'm not a fan of planet blowing scripts? ;>)
Planscan 50k
Photons 160k
Cloaks 20k
All other costs default
Rad lifetime 14 days
Rob/steal factors default
Max terra cols 100k, regen 14400 (600/hr)
Multiple photon fire on

I think that's it for the important stuff. Just the ship changes left to finish and report and we're good to go.

[burbel]

Whenever I play as a good, I try and max my exp as much as possible. In the last game, I managed to get it to around 50k exp, which was really high. That includes the exp from maxing almost 20 ports (well, 10 ports, on average 2 types of produce per port). Also, I spent a few days in a merchant freighter running around and trading at ports for the 50 exp bonus...

And lot's of buy-dump trading, makes 6 exp per turn, and did that for around 500 turns...

It's slow going, esp. when you cannot pod players with much exp to build your own...

[Wittlich]

Only 480/Turns per day? Don't you think thats rather low? I would think that 600/Turns per day would be good....or is it just me?

And I've noticed the max planets per sector will be set at two. Hmm, that's an interesting twist...should prove interesting indeed.

[Wittlich]

Photons 160k (and I see you're not a fan of turn-blowing scripts either) But the price sounds good to me too.

[burbel]

Ooh, didn't check those - I would think that, for experimenting with these settings, we would need more turns - I was thinking more like multiple thousands (4800?) - with planetary maxes increased so much, and costs increased, it would be hard to get the colos onto a planet (let alone multiple planets) in a timely manner to test them out.

JMO, YMMV, etc...

[Wittlich]

Exactly my thoughts Burbel. Even 600 per day would be rather slim given the game settings.

[Wittlich]

But actually, I think that 4800 per day is too much. How about between 1600-2400 per day? That should be "doable."

EDIT: Then again, I just realized the universe is only going to be 999 sectors, so maybe we do need to keep the turns per day down....

[Xentropy]

I mainly set the turns per day so low because the universe is so small. If we had more players, I'd raise both universe size and turns/day. I can put it back up to 600 if everyone would like.

And yeah, I highly limited the planets per sector specifically to make it even tougher of a decision which planet type to build. If I allowed too many planets (like the usual 5), people would minmax the hell out of my planets, one of each type, minimal colonists, just enough to get the figs out of the K and the equip out of the C and so on. Less planets per sector further enhances the value of class M and A, and forces you to build in a bigger bubble if you really want some of those fighter farms or whatever.

And thanks, burbel, I'll use that as a yardstick to set the Imperial BattleShip and Dreadnaught by.