Deep Space colonies and such

Hi there
Shipyard level 10 gives you the shipyard modual component
needs a large ship hull cruiser size to carry.
You can then build in any hex that the ship remains still in, ships,bases,minning bases ect

Hope this helps
Spuda

While the information above is correct, space base shipyards take longer to build units then your planet based yards. Keep that in mind when planning your game play.

Yep we've got portable construction yards.

Hmm.... Deep Space colonies. I'm pretty sure those would require game code changes. I'm not sure how extensive though. Or maybe not. It seems like you might be able to set up a function that causes a ship (or fleet) to generate goods based on stellar properties and population in storage. I'm not sure exactly how though. Maybe make a module similar to a colony module (really big thingy that has some cargo space and another function). I guess you could try copying the code for the solar generator tech.(crystal facility that makes resources based on number of suns)

Sounds like a cool Idea, but I think it would tip the balance, because the game would become a race at how fast you can pump out these space-colony thingies.

This said, I am in great favor of those things, I want to actually see things like Babylon5 and DS9 in this game ( whith the emphasis on bab5 .. it just gave me a better feel for the civilian part of such a space habitat )

Or the colonizable asteroids ( also the tiny planets in asteroid fields make a great substitute, i am playing bm mod, as chunk of rock, thats actually big enough to live on )

I would place it under stellar construction and introduce several tiers of the construction materials ( cables and plates in small, medium and huge ) to make it availably in steps.
So you can build anything from a huge space station, to different sized planet thingies,
mining habitats from asteroids, rings and spheres.

In my oppinion the resource need for rings and spheres is understated .. i think you should need a bigger tonnage of stuff. And this stuff should only be available on bases ( at least the huge type ) so its more of a pain to actually get the building materials to get there )

After the big research wait, i got my first sphere in SE:V up and colonized in about five turns ( the system being prepared ) which was kind of anti-climatic.

Also I think it as being a construct it should use maintenance.

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

I agree, they are a bit too quick to be built.
I just had a look at the Sphere World Placement generator in 'components.txt' and its very simple to add in more resources needed to build one

Change this line:
'Ability 2 Amount 2 Formula := 20000 '
and this line:
'Ability 3 Amount 2 Formula := 20000 '

change the 20ks to 50ks or perhaps 100ks

BTW, although you can build a sphereworld in a few turns, you certainly cant make use of it in a few turns. In my last game, it was going to take over 20years to build everything that was in the que, and that was with max population ( this was with Evilmod which allows bigger research and construction buildings, so on stock it would probably be 10-15 years to fill it up).

And to the original question, I think it would take me about 2 mins to make you a few components that can be placed on ships/bases to produce minerals/ research /intel ect, but...
1.) I have tried this and the research was a bit bugged, it seemed that only the first research base made woulde count towards the total research, and the others just did nothing.
2.) It would be quite unbalanced being able to build resource generators everywhere

About whether they could hold a population, well I dont know, its possible you could create a new deepspace colony type by adding it in planetsizes.txt and a new component to build it, but i think you would need to make another button on the ui to go with it, since 'colonise' only colonises a world already there.

Have you tried the Asteroid mod? It allows you to colonize asteroids. There is some ongoing effort to get that mod up and moving forward.

The other option for this is to utilize the Ringworld/Sphereworld code to generate perhaps smaller orbital habitats that are constructed worlds reminiscent of the giant space habs you had on Privateer and Freelancer...

How about modding bases so you can place facilities and pop on them and still have them able to contribute to the planet they're orbiting.

That would be one way, but the cool way would be if you could place such a thing everywhere.

Maybe Limit it to one per sector. And the "ressources from nothing" bonus could be easy circumvented by giving the habitat a very low ressource modifier or making it impossible to do anything but farm if there isn't an asteroid field or a planet present ( something which actually holds ressources )
the solar facility of the crystalline race could become extreme powerfull if there was a similiar component .. especially in systems with two or more suns ( which it is allready planetbased .. so what ).

One good idea would be, if there was a "space ressource" that could only be harvested from a station ..
but that reminds me to much of galciv with its nonsense-space-ressource fields.

Remember : Pillage! then burn.
- Cpt. Kaff Tagon

Planet creation would do some of what you describe. With bases you could build more than one but run the risk of placing your eggs in one basket.

I've made 'space colony' themed bases before, one of which was a starbase that had 8,500 crew. Served no practical purpose other than adding a little flavor to stuff.

Another similar thing was a starbase with less crew, but it had extra life support and cargo pods, to be used to store millions of planetary populaton.
Again, no practical purpose, just to add a little flavor.

As for 'deep space' colonies, the closest I can think of for doing that in game is that I usually just sneak a (stealthy or cloaked) planet making ship and a (also stealthy or cloaked) large freighter based 'super colonizer' off to one of those trinary star systems in the middle of nowhere that has nothing in it other than three stars and an asteroid field. (or a larger scale with a rare find of a star system with no planets but up to or more than a dozen asteroid fields)

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I can see how space colonies could be done.
Basic things to add.
(warning, I have less than random ideas and cobled together inspiration of past ideas from myself and others... yet again...)

1: Increase cable/plate costs of ring/sphere worlds.

2: Make cable/plates available a little earlier

3: Create new 'space colony' making component that becomes available 5-10 levels after the last level of planet making component.

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Space Colony Limitations
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A: Make them equivilent to a domed colony. They would have an "artificial" atmosphere, which cannot be changed. Basic function is like Babylon 5 they can have different parts of the station supporting different environments without having any real effect on population capacity. This means be it a single race or many races, it always has the same capacity.

B: Space Colonies will have a Structure rating, so it will be possible for them to take enough damage to be destroyed, either purposely or on accident.

C: NO mineral or radioactives value, period. Do the same for ring/sphere worlds. Seriously, you just 'used' stuff to make them, you can't simply go out and mine structural supports or bulkheads for minerals and radioactives... Organics would be allowed, due to stuff like hydroponics, aeroponics, etc.

D: the 'small', 'medium' and 'large' space colony components are seperate, the 'large' would be just before rng world tech is aquired.

E: Add in a new requirement/restriction, total size. Small space colony = 1, Medium = 2, Large = 3. Add something to ring and sphere worlds to include them in the space colony limit, perhaps 6 for ring, 12 for sphere. This limits how much can be made in a system, and means few or none can be made if a ring or sphere world is present, and a ring/sphere world cannot be made if there are to many space colonies present. (can't have to many space objects to keep from smashing into a ring world, a sphere world blotting out a star's light won't do good for a space colony's solar power, and the gravity might pull in a space colony with ease, causing major problems.)

F: Space colonies can be allowed to be scrapped, and could possibly be target of sabotage (be it base or colony based?).

G: No more than 1 per sector, cannot build one 'on' a ring/sphere world, cannot build a ring/sphere world if a space colony is within the effected radius of the star.

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Other options
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I: Add a maintenance cost based on number of structures built on the space colony.
OR
II: Add a maintenance cost modifier to structures built on the space colony. This means they are wholey dependent on other locations for resources.

III: Add a modifier that reduces the output of the one solar facility, to reduce the benifit a crystalline race might get from it, or else some sort of value that limits how many can be built (1 for small, 2 for medium, 3 for larger? Maybe toss in a 12 for ring world and 24 for sphere world?)

IV: Allow them to produce resources IF they are built on an asteroid field (or above an unihabited planet), but with the mineral/radioactives mining facilities having a similar effect as the ship based mining components, but at a reduced rate of depleting the asteroids due to having larger and more efficient mining systems.

For appearance... I'm thinking of a can/cylinder in space... (rotates to provide artificial gravity on the interior of the shell)

My idea? A sort of dreadnaught-ish vessel whose primary purpose for existing is to hold the equipment needed. As for balancing, can we make the maintenance cost a function of the number of planets you control? The idea here is to force players to do a type of all or nothing. Either planets or migratory colonies. Not both. This way it's useless to build them just to augment your production. Or at least difficult to get it to work. Yes I'd make them cost nearly nothing if you had no planets. I'm thinking it should be a racial advantage. Maybe call it "migratory race" or something like that.

Why add it to the game? All those sci-fi shows that depict a race living in deep space drifting in a collection of space ships. The idea is interesting, but balancing it? might be a smidge difficult. But hey, if modding wasn't challenging it wouldn't be fun.

Any objections to me (later) making a mod based on this idea?

make it!!! and if you wouldnt mind letting me implement it into my mod... i ave tried to do it but im not goo dwith modeling or adding stuff likethis. good luck!!!!

I'll make a new thread when I start work, for now I'll just do planning until I can get started. Please feel free to comment.

project wanderers:
basic premise: this is a race that has evolved the ability to live in deep space away from planets entirely. This is planned as a racial ability.

Racial techs:
No special planetary installations.

Space colonies, these are ships that contain an environment suitable for people to live and work indefinately without needing access to a planetary environment.

-a- These store population and allow for the population to grow without being on a planetary surface. The growth rate would be a function of both the inherent racial growth and the tech level of the component.

-b- these would generate resources of all five types for the player. The amounts would be based on techlevels and on population on the ship.

-c- other installations I'm currently thinking about making ship based versions of most if not all planetary installations.

Über portable shipyard, this is little more than a replacement for a planetary shipyard. It will have approximately the same construction capacity.

Über colony ship, like a freighter these have a specific purpose. While huge, most of their space will be taken up by the installation components. I might just make this a race specific type of extra-extra-large freighter.

Questions I need answered:
1: does it work right if you give a tech two requirements that are both racial traits?

2: how do you get the population growth to work right?

3a: What techs are either bad ideas to make as shipside techs or things that just don't work as shipside techs?

3b: what would need to be redone to work differently to acheive the same effect?

3c: what are "must haves"?

1. yes, ive done it before and as long as you have both traits its fine.
3. hmm ive noticed most resource comps dont work iunless they are above a planet. usually only one works.
the way i would think this would be done is making a new unit class ie. Sleeper ship???
3c. must haves are research, organics (easy) low hull, low cargo and move speed, cloaking capability,ABLE TO OPEN AND CLOSE A FTL HOLE!(Possible?)

If you want my help on this ill do what i can but im mainly busy with the halo mod right now, im making very good progress.

Hmm... research generation will require trial and error it seems.

Erm... I'm not sure what you're trying to say about 3c....

3c. must haves are research, organics (easy) low hull structure, low cargo and move speed, cloaking capability,ABLE TO OPEN AND CLOSE A FTL HOLE!(Possible?) Destructable

Those are the must haves for a colony ship/base/thing

Erm what I was asking about was what facilities need to have a component counterpart.

Research center, intel center, solar generator but weaker and mountable on all ships and bases, sytem shields (Block stellar manipulation.) however for he stellar manip balockers make it only impede enemies using the except thsi empire and allise thing

Hmm... Stellar manip blocker... is it possible to only block certain ones?

yes thats how the facility works, it has a ton of abilities each blocking one type of stellar manip

interesting... gonna have to get to that one. it'll not be at the top of the lit though.

an idea, have the population reproduce at normal rates, then have a hospital component and other ratial versions increase the reproduction.

as for the resource generation only usable over planets/asteroids, you can get around that by having it require a star, like the crystal trait's resource generator ^_^

on relation to the cloaking and FTL;
these colonys are the size of a small planet/very large moon right? if you are going to allow such a large thing to be cloaked it should be very expencive in construction of the component, and supply usage/penaltys (if u use any).
FTL... from what ive read around the boards most ppl are against it.. but its down to you in the end. i'd personaly only have it on large objects such as these colony super structures (if they move), and fleet flagship sized ships so fleets can take the smaller ships with them. FTL on all ships im against really.. well i would give way under certain circumstances..
_____________________

Grand Lord Exelsiar of the Azra-Dun Commonwealth, at your service

thats how i want FTL, i want it controlled only by bases or satellite groups or very large ships

I was planning on using the crystal thingy as a base. I might make versions that require a planet just for the sake of variety. I guess a good trade off would be to make the collectors that require planets give more resources. Does the crystal version work to generate intel/research?

As a side note: I've been thinking and have come to the conclusion that all the components should give your empire resource storage. Essentially the idea is that you keep all the stuff on board your ships in a series of small storage compartments.

If somebody wants FTL they can add it themself. I don't know how at the moment and don't really feel like adding it.

lol. just get the bases working and everyone else can do the rest! Hehe this will let me do an Innsurectionist tech tree and bases! Yay, ill also use it for the other races also

battlespud:
why pray tell would you give satallites FTL when their stationry? :S plus being able to fit an FTL drive on a satalite would be abusivly horrible to tech time lines.. basicly if your able to miniaturise the drive to that size then you should in theory have amazing tech levels that possibly go even beyond what the game has available..
tho im guessing you might be thinking of using FTL on the sats as a temporary portal for your fleets, if thats the case then you should just stick to using a base for it.

marhawkman:
ive no idea about the crystal thingy generating research/intel, tho theres a few mods out there with working intel/research modules already.
including storage in compartments is a decent idea, tho im sure some modules wouldnt really be the best of places to keep them. you might be able to have storage as an ability for hull's to save doing each component? -shrugs-
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Grand Lord Exelsiar of the Azra-Dun Commonwealth, at your service

not regular sattelites, a new type ex. The Stargate supergate. A unit group that with 10 units in it has enough supply to open a single wormhole.

ahh i see your thinking now, that might be pretty cool

ive a query on FTL, i know you can open a portal from anywhere in a system, but would it just connect to the outer rim of the destination system like normal?
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Grand Lord Exelsiar of the Azra-Dun Commonwealth, at your service

there is a way but idk ask isopysco

That's actually determined by the game setup options. If you set it to have wormholes spawn anywhere they'll spawn anywhere. Otherwise they'll be along the edge.

Adding (empire) Storage to the megaship hull sounds like a nice idea. Thanks.

There might be some sort of way to get the game to check to see if at least ten copies of a component are present in a sector. Not sure how though.

oh right, never realised that setting affected in game created wormholes i always use the fixed placement settings meself

an ya welcome for the idea ^_^
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Grand Lord Exelsiar of the Azra-Dun Commonwealth, at your service

*must... find... computer*

that company's still giving you trouble on that? what's the reason they keep giving you for it taking so long?
_____________________

Grand Lord Exelsiar of the Azra-Dun Commonwealth, at your service

Actually I still need to gripe at them. Haven't gotten a chance yet.

Sorry for double post, but I was trying to come up with ways to force the player to take an "all or nothing" approach to using the city ships. ti's surprisingly simple. Since this is a racial trait all we need to do is give the racial trait a cost multiplier for when building new planetary facilities. Not sure what the multiplier should be, I'm currently thinking it should be somewhere between 3 and 6.

Revised last posted idea.

Instead of a cost multiplier, I'm going to make their planetary spaceyards have a 25% of normal rate when constructing facilities. And double the rate at which they can build ships.