Colonizing

[NiteHawk]

Basicly talking about colonizing.. Just need to start a topic about it now.

I'll clean this up when I get time But ways of colonizing in the future, since planets will have defences, buildings probably, etc..

Atigerclaw03: In the future version, we're going to have a lot of stuff. from extreme distances, to more effective planetary defenses.
Atigerclaw03: Agressive colonizing just won't be possible the way it works now.
Atigerclaw03: Because the ship is going to get smeared as it attempts to run down a planet.
CValleriani: yeah true
Atigerclaw03: Whatever it is, it has to be orbit involved, and you'll need to sustain for a few seconds.
Atigerclaw03: Or minutes.
Atigerclaw03: The method needs to make it so the ship CAN handle being near the planet for a minute, but the ship HAS to be orbiting the planet and doing some kind of activity.
Atigerclaw03: But it also needs to allow the ship to make Q jumps, if slow ones.
Atigerclaw03: Essentially, a balance of allowing the ship to be near the planet long enough to do its job, but it has to take long enough at its job to allow others to respond.
CValleriani: mm alright, kinda get it so far
Atigerclaw03: Because we're essentially taking out the 'travel through space' part because we'll need to allow Quantum Space travel because of improved play area.
CValleriani received C:\Users\NiteHawk\Documents\download\cvalleriani\SolarSailingSAMPLE.mp3.
Atigerclaw03: Otherwise any colony dragging ship in, for example, Sol System Expanded (which will become our new base system) will get intercepted by fighting ships before it gets across the gaps.
Atigerclaw03: Perhaps a dedicated colony ship?
Atigerclaw03: Big as a battleship, available right from level one, but armed mainly with tough shields and armor, and point defense.
Atigerclaw03: An 'assault ship'
CValleriani: yeah true, that would work Transport ship
Atigerclaw03: Or perhaps an assault dropship for the lower ranks, and a COLONY SHIP for the medium ranks.
Atigerclaw03: This way, if you're going to colonize, you're not going to double as a battleship.
Atigerclaw03: I think I'll stick it with a colony ship only.
Atigerclaw03: Colony ship would be battleship sized, have light armament, point defenses and shields mostly...   Available to level one or two players.
Atigerclaw03: You would orbit a planet and pick up people to stock your ship, then fly to a location.  If an empty planet, you can choose to BUILD COLONY... you would have to orbit for something like thirty seconds in the mean time.
Atigerclaw03: Once the colony is built, it offloads the people you picked up into the colony.
Atigerclaw03: The second option is planetary assault.  You would orbit an enemy world and try to soak damage with the wanabe starbase that is the colony ship, but as you orbit, you would have the orbital drop pods or something that drop off your ship to the planet.
Atigerclaw03: Every one that lands reduces population by something like doing a colony run would.
Atigerclaw03: And the colony ship can sardine can up to a billion people.
CValleriani: I've seen some games that you'd have to orbit and drop troops, to take over a planet. as well youd' have tro destroy or disable planet defences for easier takings
CValleriani: aka like..
Atigerclaw03: But to fully load up and fully disgorge, you HAVE to be in position for thirty seconds.
CValleriani: You can bomb a planet to clear it, or colonize.. Planets also have 'troops' perhaps. Troops are built on planet via a troop base, more you have (Take up space though) the faster troops build..

Anyways. you can drop troops, or bombs, but what might hinder it is the point defence on a planet, You'd have to orbit a planet to drop troops or colonies..
Meh i dont know got to think on it definatly.

[ChillFactor]

Give the colonies the option of, instead of building up pop, build troops centers, defenseive stations and shield expansion units, so the colony is well defended in, say an hour or so... so you'd have to strike fast in order to aviod facing tough butt colonies.

[NiteHawk]

Give the colonies the option of, instead of building up pop, build troops centers, defenseive stations and shield expansion units, so the colony is well defended in, say an hour or so... so you'd have to strike fast in order to aviod facing tough butt colonies.

I agree with this. I like a troop idea, but yeah. We'll have to see how the general pop goes. Would be interesting to drop troops vs planet troops. But having the option to still bomb it to kill or damage defences, etc.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

See... I disagree with this, mainly for issues of complexity.

One of the core factors of the gameplay is that all the complexity is in the ship-to-ship combat area.  Most of the game's activity in fact, is based in space.  That's the core of the game, space warfare.

By adding lots of statistical factors to what is all but an unseen portion of the game, you're creating a complex 'system' of colony 'warfare' that would be calculated almost entirely in the CPU of the server.  Adding in a whole segment of troops, and special surface combat systems to a colony creates an element of gameplay that you don't really get rewarded with for any particular reason.  It starts taking elements of the battle away from the players in the game and putting it in the hands of a fancy calculator.  Players cannot PARTICIPATE in the ground battle portion of the game, and cannot really control the colonies, they don't get to have that fun.  Creating a 'ground warfare simulation' system in the game would essentially put the players in the position of having to evaluate graphs and study some data before launching a colonization attack through a force of defending players.  Essentially, an area of 'meh'...   It takes them out of the driver's seat.  Will this colonization attempt work?  Or will I end up wasting my guys against their elites?  I better check out the stats...

No.  In this case I would say try and keep the colonizing simple, at least to a simple pop vs pop count.  We can't really reward players with awesome ground battles like we can reward highly complicated equipment loadouts with ships that almost have exclusively unique loadouts and a hundred ways to play your fight.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Going over things, here's what I propose.

You have 4 types of planets/objects.

Uninhabbitalbe planets/objects.  (Stars, Gas Giants)

Asteroids.  (Only build mines or pirate bases or asteroid based things.  No colonies.)

Self Sustaining Worlds/Moons

Non Self Sustaining Worlds/Moons


The core component is the Self Sustaining World.  Especially homeworlds.

They produce population, and food.  They can take minerals delivered from asteroids and convert them directly to food units.

The second component is Non-Self Sustaining Worlds.
People can live here, but it's hard to grow food en-mass.  So they import it from Self Sustaining worlds.


The third component is Asteroid Mines.  Which produce large amounts of metals cheaply because of the low gravity.  These get shipped back to Orbital Colonies (explained shortly) or Self Sustaining Worlds.

When a self sustaining world gets a metal delivery, the metal essentially says 'we don't need the mines and industrial complexes to produce the material we get offworld, more land for agriculture!'   And the metal units get converted to food.  (Not litterally of course.)



An Orbital Colony is an object engineering frighters can build.  More expensive than a battlestation, it produces colonists actively much like a self sustaining planet.  But it only produces colonists, not food units.  (Because it produces just enough food to feed itself.)
Orbital Colonies, or Space Colonies, can produce population faster if they are fed metals  (They convert to agriculture more and population boom)  These colonies act as a kind of player enforced insurrance policy.


More, later, I'm getting so tired I'm getting a headache.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Continuing on with absolutely no idea as to my previous train of thought...


Colonizing would be done by a colony ship, rather than towing colonies.
A colony ship orbits a planet, or docks with a space colony, and picks up colonists (The same way as J to pick up a colony does now.)

The colony ship fills up to the max one billion colonist mark, and then you fly to a target planet.  Here you must press J again, and 'dropships'/'drop pods' are deployed and fall to the planet freefall style like bombs do now.  Each pod reprisents X number of people and has ship-like characteristics until it 'lands'.  So they can be intercepted, which increases the importance of suppressing planetary defenses during an attack.  Beyond that, typical 'greatest number wins' rules apply. 


I'm thinking the colony ship would be equipped with a few 'build' options like the freighter, but more with colonies in mind than utility stations.

I would place the planetary colony and surface colony as buildable options.  To build a space colony, select it.  To build a surface colony, do likewise.  But you must be orbiting the planet you with to build a colony on.  (Surface colonies will be 'free' but will have short build times.  Something like ten seconds.  Just to prevent colonyspam runs.)

Now, in order to speed things up.  If you OWN a planet, or are populating a colony, J does not deploy drop pods.  Instead, it just transfers your entire passenger load.  (No ressitance, don't need orbital assault drop pods.)


For blockade capturing.  The orbit mechanics remain the same.  Orbit the planet, and the 'supply' count, which I think should be 'morale' drops.  If the planet has food, it will climb back up once you leave orbit.  If it does not, it will remain where it is. 
If a freighter delivers a foodstuff run, it will reset to 100 instantly.  Meaning you must LITTERALLY blockade the planet and prevent deliveries.  If the planet has run out of food, leaving orbit to take care of this should be no issue.


This keeps the two styles of colony gameplay in the realm of arcade, but makes the colonizing process a little more interactive than making the player into a towtruck.

[NiteHawk]

I agree with the types of planets/moon/etcs you stated. I as well like the whole 'self sustaining orbital colony base' because its simply a neat idea, specially if lets say, there enemies have most of the planets and you need to try to gain 'more' population quicker.

I also think the 'dropping pods' is a cool idea rather then tugging a colony. Would require tons of work, probably a new 'Cargo' button which we talked about. Basicly colonies would be apart of this. Perhaps each pod can contain about 100M of players max, so each time you 'grab' or 'remove' its adding/removing 100M, up to a max, which is depedent on the ship cargo space. Weight will also play into factor much like tugging does, will make you more sluggish if your full vs empty.

In general I'd say stick to 'dropping pods' throughout the whole thing. Not only will it be easier, its seems silly to change it up if you own a planet, I know its more 'but we have the planet!' but you never know, maybe I want to intercept you and destroy those pods before they reach the planet, it should all be one base system, it will also be a hassle to have several different types.

The food supply is genious, I love it because it brings up some more things into play. Although AI will have to be smarter, we'll most likely need two types of AI, ones that colonize, and ones that supply planets with goods. Brings a nice play into using resources.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

If that'll work for ya', good.  This should be sufficient.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Bumping this thread for review...


Considering what's being done in terms of cargo-space and the module-pickup thread...

I think it would be possible to avoid having to code in a special colony ship, and use a Colony Module that can only fit on freighters.

It would still allow for the colonizing style I proposed earlier in this thread, but saves the hassle of having to create a special ship for the task.

[NiteHawk]

Bumping this thread for review...


Considering what's being done in terms of cargo-space and the module-pickup thread...

I think it would be possible to avoid having to code in a special colony ship, and use a Colony Module that can only fit on freighters.

It would still allow for the colonizing style I proposed earlier in this thread, but saves the hassle of having to create a special ship for the task.

Because you can specify groups now, you can make any module 'ship specific if you want, or not. that's fine overall. But yeah. I understand for the most case. Better to have it customizable