I'll call it MoO 1.5 for now. As much as I'd like these to be viewed as suggestions for MoO4, I'm afraid WG is past that point. Now just for fun and pet projects. I won't get into the 'hot topics' of star lanes or combat for the time being.
Work in Progress.
Planet growth and potential determined by BC's created by population and factories.
Population create 0.5 BC waste-free (increased to 2.0 at planetology level 50) and factories produce 1 BC with waste. Population level is determined by terraforming and biome. Factory growth is capped by k*pop where k starts at 2 and can be researched up to 7. Early planets are measured in the dozens of BC. Late game planets are measured in the thousands of BC.
Slider system would allocate the planet's BCs into
"Construction" (ships + defensive buildings).
"Infrastructure" (factories + buildings)
"Ecology" (pollution management, terraforming, +population growth)
"Research" (self explanatory, converts BC into RP).
Single planets per system (with option as multiple systems as a rich-like bonus) See below.
Espionage as part of global tax burden (no build queue for spying...)
Population movement (and invading) handled by raw population (no build queue for transports)
Random research "tree" with small bonuses for researching multiple areas at a time.
Racial bonuses for strong/poor research in particular fields (ie bulrathi good at construction)
Incremental terraforming with +max pop as the primary result (terafforming accomplished through eco slider and not affected by rich/poor status)
For anyone looking to give MoO1 a shot, I highly recommend reading through this tutorial http://sirian.warpco...1/tutorial.html
Space monsters (and more variety)
Planet bonuses (natives, etc)
Universe events (Antarans, monsters, fluxes)
Multiplayer (hotseat/lan/internet)
Custom races
Fleet maintenance augmented by soft limits (command points potentially)Alternative defense structures besides missile bases
More diplomatic options (research treaties)
Government bonuses
Leaders (see below)
MoO2 buildings were meant to diversify planets but they failed miserably. They also hurt the pace of the game.
Leaders in MoO2 were primarily there for flavor and a bit of RNG. They were 'fun' but not exactly balanced or critical to the game. To their credit though they were relatively easy to manage.
MoO 1.5 should expand the leader mechanic to augment the role of Moo2 buildings. Ideally we will get the planet/system diversity and flavor without the pace-breaking build queue. Buildings would still exist but their construction would be controlled by a smoother measure of 'infrastructure' rather than knit-picking every building. There would also be a limited number available in your empire or steep drawbacks that only make sense on specialized planets (in combination with certain leaders).
The mantra is pretty simple. Fewer buildings but more decisions. MoO2 had too many buildings and too few decisions.
Building management would be abstracted out of a player defined queue and instead focus on a binary 'build it or not' selection system. Besides the reduction in *number* of available buildings, there would also be a drastic decrease in the amount of time/resources to build a structure (basically 0 cost for the basic buildings, larger cost for the unique buildings/wonders). The bigger concern in basic buildings would be maintenance costs rather than build time.
With a checklist, how do we know the order to build structures? Can a brand new planet really just start with deep core mines?. The primary condition on order is that buildings would have a requirement based on the number of factories on the planet. (Alternatively we could consider a requirement on the total BC production of planet, this would factor in population and existing buildings as well).
Hydroponic farms, for example, may require 100 factories before they can be built (for those not familiar with Moo1, 100 factories is achievable within a few turns on the home planet). Biospheres may be 130 factories. If both of these buildings are 'checked' then hydroponic farms would automatically be built by the Infrastructure slider (which normally builds regular factories) when 100 factories are present. The 'cost' of farms would be trivial and finished in 1 turn. The main hurdle is getting a planet to 100 factories. After the farm finishes the Infrastructure slider would return to pumping out factories until 130. Then biospheres would be built.
If the planet already has 150 factories when farms and biospheres are 'checked' then the industry bar would build farms first and then biospheres (likely finish both on the same turn). Order is determined by the factory requirement.
Because buildings are so cheap to actually build (the bigger concern is maintenance!) The lower factory requirement the better; the faster the planet can come up to par. Leadership/racial/tech bonuses may reduce the number of factories needed in order to build the structure. The very first version of research laboratories may require 200 factories (in the early game only the home planet would likely have this much infrastructure). However, as part of minituraization/tech/leaders etc this may be reduced to ~50 factories by the mid-game. Therefore new planets would be able to get a research lab much sooner on their growth curve.
Automated Factories:
Produces +50 construction points per turn and increases the return of BC spent on construction by 10%. (Construction applies to ship building and defensive structures).
Maximum of 3* Automated Factories per empire.
Requires 150** factories on the planet to be built. Build cost of 100 BC's. (Approximately 1/4 of a turn)
Robo Mining Plant
Produces +100 construction units per turn and increases the return of BC spent on construction by 15%.
Maximum of 2* Robo Mining plants per empire.
Replaces Automated factory if it exists.
Requires 300** factories on the planet to be built. Build cost of 1,000 BC's. (Approximately 1 turn)
Deep core Mine
Produces +150 construction units per turn and increases the return of BC spent on construction by 20%
Maximum of 1* Deep Core Mine per empire.
Replaces Automated Factory and Robo Miner plant if present.
Requires 600** factories on the planet to be built. Build cost of 10,0000 BC's. (Approximately 5 turns).
* The base number of buildings available changes with size of galaxy.
* Leader traits may allow a building on that particular planet without counting towards the empire max.
**The factory requirement of buildings may be influenced by racial/tech/leader traits.
The standards would all be there. production/ecology/research/morale/money/pollution/growth/spying/trading
Ones to add could be:
+max population
% chance to change biome (or will change the biome to X in Y turns)
Increase production to slider X where X could be construction, infrastructure, ecology, research.
+BC per population
Increases number of factories per population
Decreases costs of factories
Doubles the effect of building X (where building X is something like automated factories or research labs).
Reduce the factory requirement in order to build building X on this planet (or across the empire)
Reduce the cost of building building X (on this plane or across the empire)
Provides a 'free' building X on this planet without counting towards the empire maximum
Increases the empire's maximum count of building X by 1 (this is more powerful than version above it because it does not require that building on the leader's particular planet).
However, not all leadership traits need to be positive. There may be negative effects as well. Obvious negative examples are the opposites of ones listed above.
Random tech tree but more exclusive choices
I firmly believe that randomly generated research options from MoO1 is the superior of the 2 systems.
It really is an amazing system. The randomly generated choice-set. The progression of levels based on highest-so-far + number of discoveries. The % chance window of making a discovery. The 'interest' gained from having slow but consistent allocation. The built-in miniaturization. All of it is great.
However, there is something to be said for player choices. I think a good mixture would be to rely on MoO1 style but have some techs exclude others. For example, Improved Eco restoration makes it cheaper to clean up waste while "Reduced Industrial waste x%" makes it so there's less to clean up. I believe choosing one should make the other much more expensive (in terms of RP) or non-researchable (but still able to trade, steal of course!). This encourages other ways to acquire tech (looking at you psilons...) and increases replayability because available techs are created each game.
These exclusions can vary by level. Choosing one of terraforming +10/20/30/40 may exclude (or drastically increase RP cost of) improved robotic controls III and IV. However, the choice between terraforming 50 (and above) and robotic controls V (and above) would be made again later in the game and can differ based on the previous choice and what you've been able to steal up to that point.
MoO1 had this very indirectly with races have strengths/weaknesses in the 6 areas. Poor construction races would need to get their pollution reduction from planetology and vice versa.
At the heart of MoO1 research is the randomly generated options each game. I think this could be pushed slightly further in MoO1.5.
The first step would be to decrease the number of options generated by the traditional system. This means the game is a bit stingier when initializing each player's unique tech options.
Next, we allow in-game options to add back some techs to the (now sparser) tech tree. To be clear, these events do not give you the actual technology--they just add them to your list of available options to research later on. In some cases, these techs may be included with a multiplicative bonus(or penalty) to their base research cost.
First to explore a radiated planet? +% chance of adding radiated base tech to your tree.
Hiring a leader can come with a researchable tech as opposed to giving the tech out-right.
Artifact planet? Perhaps it adds 2-3 options to your tech list instead of giving you 1 tech out-right.
Exchanging techs diplomatically may now include the exchange of tech-PLANS that let you share tree options instead of already-researched techs.
Conventional research spying a bit too risky from a diplomatic point of view? Allow option to still tech-PLANS that will add another race's available tech to your tech tree. The other race may or may not have researched that tech yet! A failed version of this may come with a 2-3x RP penalty instead of diplomatic losses.
Invading a colony will still reward with already-researched techs but higher chance to add UNresearched techs to your tree.
I'm sure there are many others
This feature of MoO2 was interesting for awhile. However, the long term result were more chokepoints and fewer territory to cover. I believe multiplanet systems are a precursor to starlanes (but that is another topic). It also added to more micromanagement for the same 'size' of empire and made combat not as intuitive.
In MoO 1.5 I propose multiple planets be a somewhat common bonus to a starsystem similar to the rich/artificats that currently exist. To be clear, there would not actually be multiple planets. The bonus would just influence population, factories, and costs. Missile bases would still defend the entire system (just like solo planets). Invasion would still happen like a solo system. If the planet in a multisystem planet is taken over, the population/factories on the other ones just disappear. The strength of the bonus bonus would be determined by a single value: how much +population the extra satellites can sustain.
As an example, one rating of multiple planets in a system would add +25 population to the system total (non-terraformable). Besides being non terraformable , their factories would be built last at a cost of 10x the base cost. This makes multi-planet systems expensive investment but the +population and factories could result in some of the strongest output in the late game.
All population and factories are grown on the primary planet first (just like solo planets) but then population continues to grow up to 25 per satellite. Once the primary has finished factory construction a simple popup gives the option to continue factory production on the satellites at a steeper cost. Once built, the factories on satellites produce BC and pollution just like a regular factory. Only difference is the higher initial construction costs. It is entirely possible to play a multi-planet system just like a regular system that has a small population bonus.
Speaking of population. For simplicity population would follow some simple rules:
1) When transferring TO a multiplanet system you cannot exceed the base population of the primary planet. The satellites must grow organically (after primary is at max).
2) When transferring FROM a mutiplanet system you cannot exceed half of the base population of the primary planet. In other words you cannot remove people from sattelites.
3) When defending from invasion, only the population on the primary planet is used. If they lose, the population and factories on sattelites all disappear.
Edited by Moo4, 08 April 2016 - 07:04 AM.