Can you tell us a bit more about other systems you have in your game currently? Perhaps more perspective will help us understand what would fit in better.

Also, I remember when you first posted this game idea. Glad to see you're still working on it.

>>5955986
Well for now there isn't much. You have one main resource called "resources", which is an amalgame of processed ores and overall industrial capacity (it acts much like gold or credits). Another resource that can be mined and collected (but only in certain systems) is Argonite, you need it for advanced projects and space travel. So it's basically space oil.

Infrastructures produce the following "outputs": industry, agriculture (only available if there are biosphere worlds in the system, which are actually rare so systems with biosphere planets are an important resource), technology, and military cadre. A portion of these outputs goes to maintenance of other structures in the system (for example orbital cannons require tech and military cadre to maintain) which should stop people from spamming unneeded structures.

These outputs are used as you might think - industry determines how fast you build and how big you can build, surplus tech goes to research (as distributed in tech screen) or to conduct projects, and surplus cadre goes to doctrine research.

The problem is that this system is so neat and self-contained that population caps and colonies don't fit anywhere. It works perfectly fine without any population. And I need population because of radiation, nuclear weaponry and the whole "growth" thing.

Population could help determine how fast things occur. Many hands make light work etc. Industry could also be how efficiently you build things, so that it isn't just sacrificed at the altar of shittons of bodies

>>5956116
How about you have a system whereby population influences what you can build, therefore you cant build a massive spaceship factory immeadiately after colonisation, but you can build a small mine perhaps.

Pop should be its own resource.
It should influence everything. It is tedious but it makes sense until you get some robots doing your work for you.

You know, I have personally always seen micromanagement as one of the draws of 4x games. Population's part of that (Space Empires is my example, wherein you can build pop. transports to manage the number of people on each planet).

>>5956145
>>5956158

Or a combination of these two things, where your current population determines what level of facility the planet can possibly build, and have the game automatically upgrade the infrastructure based off of the current population levels and preset limitations.

>>5956116
Uhh, don't those systems need people to run them, at least at some level? You could start creating minimum population requirements for certain infrastructures (or include a freight cost to ship in the necessary population).

>>5956185
I respect that, and indeed I've enjoyed a lot of micro heavy games. However, this game's purpose is to test the macromanagement approach so I'll have to put everything under that philosophy for now. Obviously I've hit a snag with going too far and removing planets.

>>5956145
>>5956158
>>5956180

At first I tried to modify my system similar to this. I experimented with simply multiplying the outputs with total population present, and I put in another infrastructure, "Colonies", that occupied slots and provided space for 5M colonists each. But this further separated infrastructure and population and created a nasty side effects that you always had to set aside a perfectly fixed percentage of slots for "colonies" if you wanted maximum efficiency. Less than that, and you had too much infrastructure. More than that and you had surplus people.

Assigning population units to individual planets was out of the question because slots are not connected to planets. Assigning population to slots or infrastructure still didn't work because you either have too much population or too little so it becomes a constant juggling problem (if new population "units" appear by growth they may be distributed different than what you intended so you must reassign them, which is silly not only due to micromanagement but because reassigning millions of colonists between colonies shouldn't be that easy or cheap).

>>5956199
>>5956210
Having population as a requirement only is something I considered, but there is a problem with that. What happens if you construct advanced infrastructure but then lose the population required for it? It creates a lot of problems. These might be mitigated if the infrastructure reverts to its lower tier after population is lost. I even jotted this down in what I call the "population as slots" design, in which you colonize systems and terraform planets to get a bigger population cap, and then every "level" of population you get allows you to upgrade one more infrastructure as you see fit.

While that's nice, then you lose the distinction between engineering a plague to kill all the living things on a planet but leave the infrastructure intact - and a full-scale antimatter bomb strike that just sends everything to bits.

So there's always something.

Unless some fa/tg/uy comes up with something better, my next prototype will probably use a blatant rip-off of Civilization approach, except substituting "terrain" for "planets" so in civ-speak rocky planets would yield 2 industry and biosphere planets would yield 3 food and 1 industry. The reason this could work is that unlike Civ you can't just relocate people from planet to planet on a whim. However, it approaches the player to planetary level. At the very least you would need to control (or relegate to governors) when to colonize or terraform individual planets. However, if that is all you would do per-planet I'd be willing to tolerate it because once you colonize it you no longer need to interact with it. I like this approach because it is very emperor-like to not have to give a damn about what happens on individual planets.

Keep in mind the system should accomodate for things such as slave colonies, forced labor, and penal colonies, which is another reason to go for a per-planet approach (one way or the other).

>>5956413
You could have the infrastructure remain but have 'efficiency' ratings or something, so that under certain populations a 3rd tier Factors (or whatever you call it in your game) works like a 2nd tier factors, and so on. Basically the infrastructure is still there, you just don't have the people to man it to full capacity so it can only produce at a certain level.

>>5956449
>Factors

Factories. Fuck me stupid.

>>5956413
Please tell me that we can have Penal Units in our armies, also, did you ever set up that website you were on about?

This makes me wish for some news on that Plunge roguelike some fa/tg/uy was making.

>>5956459
>Please tell me that we can have Penal Units in our armies
You couldn't. Until now. Thanks for that.

I planned slave troops but didn't think to include penal units. Silly me. That would provide even more incentive to build prison colonies and be an authoritarian douchebag.

>>5956458
Yeah, if all else fails, this is the fallback plan. It may not be the most elegant thing in the world, but it would work and it would make population important, while still including infrastructure and colonies etc.

There's a problem with that map of space. It's not 3d.

>>5956616
Thank you, thank you so very much. Could I suggest that the penal units have more toughness due to the harsh conditions they would have to endure, or more morale as they would be fighting for their freedom? But they would obviously be weak tactically. I don't know how this fits into your system but I would love to see something like this.

>>5956661
I beg to differ.

>>5956879
Well that's...just awesome!

>>5956879
It's amazing how far along technology has come. Now one guy can put together a 4x game in his spare time and it looks better than studio built stuff from 6-7 years ago.

>>5956963
>Now one guy can put together a 4x game in his spare time and it looks better than studio built stuff from a year ago.

>>5956663
I haven't even started on combat yet, but current stats include firepower, defense, tactical rating and morale, so they can be tweaked. I was just going to make them a cheap meatshield whose recruitment didn't detract from your manpower, but since you seem to have thought it through, if you have other thoughts please share them. For example, how would one "release" these penal armies? I say armies because in this game you have millions of colonists so you really don't produce any units below brigade level.

Btw penal colonies (or "Prison colonies") are supposed to be colonies that start with zero population and don't increase in pop by normal rules but by the level of crime in the surrounding systems (crime level is already tracked in-game). This population works by "slave labor" rules, which means it always outputs double labor regardless of morale.

Also, the higher the hostility of a penal world, the more effectively it reduces crime (the prospect of being sent to a Mercury-like planet should be a pretty solid deterrent) but also the inmates die faster.

So, I wrote like a paragraph of advice, before I realized I was speaking in retarded generalizations rather than helping out.

So, in lieu of, y'know, constructive help, allow me to offer vacuous support and another voice to the clamoring crowd begging you to make this.

>>5957002
>implying this game looks better than Civ4

>>5957002
>>5956963
I'm not really gunning for cutting edge graphics, I'll settle for "not shit". Maybe if the game is well-received I'll fund the art for a commercial sequel, but that's distant future at this point (seeing as how I don't even have population or combat yet).

But there is NO fucking excuse for space 4x games not having 3d maps for, like, 10 years already. Some of them even have cutting edge 3d accelerated graphics - and then proceed to use them on 2d maps (I'm looking at you, Space Empires V and GalCiv 2).

Let me reiterate this: They are TURN-BASED (so no worries about slowdowns) SPACE games in 3D TECHNOLOGY that is 1000 times faster than what MOO 2 used to run on, but they have 2D GALACTIC MAPS. It doesn't get much more ridiculous than that.

That's one of the things I wanted to remedy. I use a 2d sprite engine but I make an impression of a 3d environment.

Plz post complete source code and graphics files if you want help.

>>5957019
GLEEGLEEGLEEGLEE I like the sound of that idea. Can anyone say interstellar crime syndicates?

So, in my 4x project (Now aborted because of work), I decided that rather than just make agglomerated species empires, to allow a more granular kind of thing, even allowing (If the player made a series of very tricky political decisions and rode through the civil war) another species to usurp the facilities and bureaucracy of the player species if the player got sick of the race he was playing as.

Course, that game also had all development of empires handled by the AI, and the player expended influence that he accrued at risk of being discovered to influence matters, say, sending a fleet to protect an unimportant colony of rabble rousers.

Naturally, my project only got to me making a map that was little better than a spreadsheet when I noticed the hilarious tendency of 90% of the species self destructing and the remaining ten percent that actually got off world meeting and promptly destroying each other. So, yeah.

Uhm, point was, will you be incorporating inter species migration and cultural conflict kind of like say Victoria from Paradox games, or not? Cause it sounds like your penal colony system could handle it. Y'know. If you wanted to do that.

>>5957103
Will the game actually take place on a spiral galaxy sort of map, or will it just be a little square slice of whatever galaxy your'e in?

Actually playing in a spiral galaxy would be bitching, especially if you could zoom all the way out and see the whole thing.

I realize it can be difficult to generate a realistic galaxy though....

>>5956288
Macro works better for an RTS-style game.

Got a repository URL? Is this open source?

>>5957153
Here is a screenshot of an ANCIENT spiritual ancestor to this game where you see how a huge galaxy was meant to be represented (this is just a schematic, every dot would be a single star system with planets etc. This is a game similar to this one I tried making 5 years ago in Visual Basic and DirectX 7. Hooo, boy. Was I in for a surprise. Apparently VB wasn't made for game making.

But no, you can't really have realistic spiral galaxies. I've rather settled for making the fluff such that the galaxy is divided into "sectors" by the way hyperspace currents work. One sector = up to 100 stars. You are one of a million ofshoots of human race and every mission is one such sector.

It would be interesting if there was a game where you controled an entire galactic empire, but in such a game there's no way individual stars could be even represented in memory by today's computers. Some games (Frontier) cheated by procedurally generating a galaxy but for a dynamic RTS you'd definitely need to store every star unless you went for an abstraction.

>>5957277
>>5957123
It's not open source, but not because I'm afraid of something but because, well, the source code is a mess and I've never collaborated on a project. Ever.

>>5957019
The stats that I proposed seem to fit in quite well with your system already, as for the "release" system, that was just a reasoning for the higher morale, although perhaps there could be some option whereby you set "get mustered out after X battles", and the shorter the "X" the greater the morale.

>>5957126
Migration ships were already in a previous version of this game (a prototype I made in Visual basic) and were working pretty nicely. Basically if a system got too crowded the game would have a chance every few weeks or so to launch civilian ships (uncontrollable by player) containing a few thousands of colonists that would move towards another owned low-population system. This would make for a neat redistribution of population. I fully intend to replicate this behavior in this game. Systems can keep track of population separately on a per-species basis already, so it could lead to some interesting effects. I also intend to make civilians relocate from occupied systems as refugees which could lead to problems with overcrowding. Also morale and genome integrity are tracked for every population group on every system so migrants/refugees will be able to demoralize or introduce mutations into other groups. This might lead to the need to establish quarantines or ghettos etc. Overall I plan to do a lot with migrants. I like it because everything is automated so it flows naturally in the game and doesn't require micromanagement from the player.

It will also probably lead to hillarious bugs. I can't wait.

>>5957565

Meh, you don't have to actually collaborate (although if someone sends you a good patch you'll probably want to use it), I just like to be able to get the source for things. As for messiness - if it doesn't actually cause san loss, then fuck it, who cares? Have you _seen_ some of the code that's out there? Obviously I'm not gonna order you to open source it, this is just my personal opinion, but it sounds like there's no real reason not to.

>>5957696
And I don't have any reason to hide it. Source will be posted, although MAYBE I'll censor the multiplayer code to prevent cheats. But we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

>>5957696
Liberal Crime Squad comes to mind as a san breaker. My God, Toady, is a brilliant, crazy, probably 'spergin bastard, but damn he makes some ugly code sometimes.

>>5957902
Perhaps this is a good place to mention I would give my left nut to be as determined and focused (some would say 'spergin) as Toady is? And I would give the right one for Dwarf Fortress source code.

rolled 4, 2, 5 = 11

How do these SPESS REILRODES work? Are they they basically just like starlanes?

>>5958137
Hyperspace lanes, wormholes, jump gates, doesn't fucking matter as much as the fact that they exist.

rolled 5, 2, 5 = 12

>>5958184
The reason I ask is travel time. Can you move instantly between connected systems, does distance have any effect on travel time, etc.

Though I like the idea of moving a fleet through every single enemy system and RAPE RAPE RAPING everything in one turn.

>>5958137
They are called Coilways. They are like starlanes, yes. They accellerate ships and form a trade network (no trade is made outside the coilway grid). They are basically roads from Civilization. But the most important thing is they reduce the amount of argonite needed for space travel. I think people don't get the idea about how scarce argonite is. You won't be able to just send your fleets everywhere you like.

Oh, right. They also enable piracy and raiding. They can also be targeted by galactic warheads. or destroyed by torpedoes/storms.

But mostly I use them because they give this awesome look of 3d awareness to the game. And because they simplify calculations and pathfinding. I'm basically giving players the incentive to make the gameworld easier for the game to interpret and process.

Oh and you can only build two per system so if you want branches and intersections you must fork out a lot of resources for a generator that increases the total up to 4.

So, let me get this straight. Your making a scifi simulator of glactic empires? Why not go all out and have populations something you CAN'T control through direct means. (Besides "trimming" the garden) You can introduce new things to the population, but it's entirely up to luck as to what happens. So in that, you don't control the people, but the base makeup of the culture.

rolled 2, 1, 2 = 5

>>5958232
Can you destroy a coilway while there are ships in transit along it?

>>But then I realized while this is does give choice and control, it has literally zero connection with POPULATION.

Forgive my obtuseness, but so what? Pop and infrastructure should progress at the same rate initially, but either can be killed off and having one but not the other has a positive influence on the other's growth.

>>5958207
fleets move in "real time" so the farther a system, the longer it takes, of course. You can do some sweet stuff like intercept fleets mid-flight and have deep-space combat. You can ALSO send a fleet to a point in empty space, Homeworld-style. YOu can construct deep space stations to extend logistics range. Stargates can transport fleets instantly (will probably cost a lot). Plans are in place to make different races have different quirks for star travel. For example, Space Bugs can't use coilways but can move without paying resources as long as they are in range of slow, huge synapse ships. This way they are slow as hell but can travel in large fleets. Just imagine a fleet of space bugs ten times the size of all your ships combined en route to your system with an ETA of 50 years.

Of course, there will be failsafes in the game SPECIFICALLY to make the "one huge fleet of doom" scenario unfeasable, starting with maximum size of fleet an admiral can control before being overwhelmed, to the fact that minefields and warheads will be completely dodge-able by smaller fleets but not by larger ones. Obviously this will need balancing.

rolled 5, 3, 4 = 12

>>5958344
Are there any artifacts? Lost technologies? Godly energy being neutral races? Pirates?

I'm assuming you have FTL communication so you can issue orders to fleets no matter how far away they are. How are sensor ranges implemented?

>>5958258
Well, control will be indirect to a degree. You will deal more with imperial edicts and policies and structures of power than with controling individual colonies. That's the plan anyway.
>>5958267
For now all it does is remove the coilway. But I see where you're going with this and all I can say is: we'll see how it works out.

>>5958329
If you only had "populations" and "infrastructure" counters that would be perfectly acceptable. But the problem is there are different kinds of infrastructure and special structures on top of that. I need to make output dependant on both without having - or BEING ABLE to - micromanage or distribute population.

But it's not a bad idea. I'll incorporate it into one of the few temporary models I've come up with and see how it works.

>>5958410
Probably, probably, nope, definitely.

Weeel, there are restrictions.

Fleets have a "signature" based on fleet size, and sensors have strength and base range. If a sensor has range of 10 light years it can detect a fleet of size X at 10 LY, and of size 5X at 50 LY. There are modifiers in play such as cloak, stealth and a phenomenon called "Galactic night" when frequency of coilspace currents make it difficult to detect stealthy fleets. Even the background nebula darkens to alert the player of this.

You basically have an analogue of a "day/night" cycle lasting 10 years or so, although of course nothing PHYSICALLY brightens or darkens. It's even basis for the galactic calendar.

Also cloaked ships will be called "submerged" and you will be able to launch cheap "depth charges" anywhere on the galactic screen you suspect "submerged" fleets may be. All cloaked ships within a few light years of a depth charge detonation are destroyed, be it frigate or battleship. So you see, cloak has upsides and downsides.

rolled 2, 3, 4 = 9

>>5958567
On the maps you've posted there doesn't seem to be any apparent difference between systems, save for color and owner. Are you going to have any additional information about the system displayed at all times, without the player having to select it?

Hey OP, with your original question about population. Have you tried to have all planets have near infinite max population with current population growing at an X percentage per turn with the population starting to stave if there is not enough food?

Wait, so is all FTL done through Coilways or are there other methods of FTL?

>>5958650
Well all the stars are of the same kind (boring medium yellow star) for now until I carry over the graphics from the earlier version (here's a screenie). But that's all cosmetics. As for substance, there will be probably be different "scans", such as "economy scan", "political scan" etc. which will render the starmap schematically and highlight relevant stuff (systems with large income will be rendered as huge spheres in the economy map etc.)

I've been devoting a lot of thought about how to present the most important information about a system to the player at a glance, and some sort of info panel will definitely be in.

For example:
Omicron Centauri
[Pop] 12 [Infrastructure] 4 [Fleets] 5 [Armies] 15 [currently active project] [famine]

where brackets denote small 32x32 icons and symbols.

rolled 1, 6, 5 = 12

>>5958786
How is diplomacy handled? Are there any actually unique options and dialouge or is it all mundane standard options?

What in God's name made you choose that font?

Looks like Space Civilization.
I'd pay for this shit.

Follow known population growth models, adding a multiplier for education (pushing reproduction down) or poverty (pushing it up.) Set each planet with a random amount of resources capping the limit it can suppose, adjusting that by education level to represent more efficient use of resources. Roll accordingly.

>>5958690
Sure, although I think I'll still cap population (before Dyson spheres roll by or something). Maximum population isn't the problem anyway. It's how current population interacts with infrastructure to produce output.

>>5958763
Traveling outside coilways is possible but costs more (of already scarce) argonite. That's why trade routes only use coilways - it's too expensive for private enterprises to do otherwise.

Coilways are optional, but are required for efficient fleet response and for trade networks.

Like I said, roads from Civilization.

For your building problem could I suggest some kind of timer before shifting down a tier.

Ex: A planet has industry at tier 5 then a plague kill 70% of the population or there is an exodus. The building are still there but not all of them are used and the unused one start to become less and less useful until they become ruins.
That would allow you some time to send remplacement population.

Also a stupid idea that came to me while writting this.
Each battle (or event) over a planet would be part of that planet history so infamous battle would impact trade/colonization (let say a higly populated planet is wiped by a plague almost nobody would want to live on a graveyard).

>>5958979
The last part is actually a very cool idea. You should try to include some type of fame rating.

>>5958850
Had to make a bitmap font myself. Didn't know about anti-aliasing back then.

Diplomacy is still in the works. War, peace, vassals, trade, alliance, slave empire are supported, but I'm hoping to spice up inter-empire relations with novel concepts such as Grudge Rating (a number keeping track of their civilians you killed), ability to perform targeted propaganda as empire-level project, you know. Small touches. Also since Emperor is a unit on the map I'm thinking of making Diplomatic Visits and Conferences (with Emperor physically moving to visit/conference location) etc.

By the way, having a high grudge rating towards someone unlocks access to unethical weapons, projects and protocols.

rolled 5, 5, 4 = 14

>>5959053
>By the way, having a high grudge rating towards someone unlocks access to unethical weapons, projects and protocols.

So you could goad an enemy civilization into murdering whole planets of civilians just to get access to virus bombs? I am pleased by this.

>>5959053
Oh I want a BB rating (Bad Boy) if you use unethical weapon and ata certain point after you BB rating reach a critical level everyone decide they are better without you and declare war on you.

>>5959012
>>5958979
Roger that. Thanks for the ideas. Like always, I can't guarantee every little bit will make it to the final version but I'll at least try.

>>It's how current population interacts with infrastructure to produce output.

Take your list of buildings, with how much pop each needs to function. Starting with the most basic, subtract each from the total population. Those are the buildings that work this round. If there's pop left over, they contribute to construction. Then pop grows, to the limit set by the sum of all possible jobs * 1.25.

Done. It even adds a nice gameplay decision - do you upgrade the population growth increasers first for max pop, or last to ensure they'll still function in an attack?

rolled 4, 6, 1 = 11

Tell me you have ship design.

>>5959105
Yeah, don't worry too much about adding in everything we suggest. Just, you know, if you can.