2018-07-24 Turrets, Sensors, World Building Limit

[zslayern]

The population cap on the largest worlds using old cities is barely over a thousand. Okay, that's per zone, so barely over 3000.

Exactly, the old system may have had smaller numbers, but that was where it's strength was, it easier to keep track of and the identical building designs(or rather functionality) also kept balance. Big numbers just increases the deviation for better or worse.

The old system encouraged you to settle on multiple resource zones as well and tailor your cities production to its resource quality, the new system encourages making a sprawling city with roads that snake into other resource zones. Which system was better thats up to you.

[Deantwo]

For example, the coal power plant in the exchange is 7,000+ cubic meters. You could build almost 15,000 of them within the size limit. The colony nuclear power plant is about 15k cubic meters. You could build almost 7k of them.

That limit is a lot less severe than I thought then.
But I will still say that volume is a lot harder to calculate in your head than simple building numbers.

Looking forward to hear how 5crownik007's city fairs with the new limit. Since that is what I would consider a "big" city.

Would love to see these "doomed" MEGA cities. Got pictures?

[Haxus]

When the limit is the number of buildings, say 10, the player is motivated to make 10 of the largest buildings possible.

When the limit is the volume of buildings, then it is more like currency that is spent little by little to buy each building. The player is motivated to budget their volume wisely and build the buildings they decide they need, in whatever proportion.

Though with the gigantic size limit, you don't exactly have to balance numbers to build about whatever you want.

[Haxus]

-3,144,108 morale due to too much building volume on the world.

That resulted from 3,144,108,000m³ building volume in excess of 104,857,600m³, for a total building volume of 3,248,965,600m³ on that world.

The Atlantis is 2,254,157m³. That city has building volume in excess of 1,441 Atlantis-sized ships. Only 46 of them would fit within the limit.

[Vectorus]

World Building Limit

This seems a sensible solution to combat balance, as well as to the population controversies we had on the old boards. Numbers in the tens of thousands allow new ships to be built at a reasonable rate. Perhaps the world population limits can now be relaxed or abolished, since most of them are unattainable anyway. It's just more complication. 

A city with a few hundred buildings and a few dozen citizens visible to the player is a good sci-fi backdrop. It could represent the idea of a 10,000 person town or of a 10 million person metropolis. The aesthetic choices are now open to everyone, while the "functional" numbers are better balanced. Nicely done.

The numbers may need tweaking in time - spacecraft can be totally dedicated to combat, while cities which are equally dedicated will have no strategic resource value. You would have to choose between defenceless cities and cities with nothing to defend.

When the limit is the number of buildings, say 10, the player is motivated to make 10 of the largest buildings possible.

I'm glad you see it this way - it's essentially our argument against that kind of limit in the old thread. If those limits ever need to return, owing to server load, 400 seemed a reasonable number. Volume-as-currency is more flexible and encourages diversity.

Certain volumes should be worth more on planets. i.e. Each m3 of say, storage, should take more commodities than the equivalent m3 on a spaceship. Not sure if this is already true. Probably also true of things like power, shield strength etc.

Life Forms on Sensors

Perhaps just add a filter? The extra options can be useful. I remember having fun with it in the relic mission - beaming down right on top of the guy. It was a real Star Trek experience..."reading five lifesigns, captain!"

 Although it didn't always make sense that I could detect a lone person on the other side of a planet, while the massive battleship hiding in a bush underneath me was totally invisible...

Cannot Scan Under Water

Gas giant cities and underwater colonies, particularly ones built under the old rules and currently defenceless, are now quite vulnerable, particularly considering their generally low populations and military capacity.

By way of compensation, perhaps buildings shouldn't show up on the world map or sensor contacts, even on the locator's "city present", unless you are able to read them by scanner domain. That would unify the rules under common sense, and allow true hidey-holes for those who want them. You'd have to dive into a planet's ocean to check - possible but time-consuming.

Looking forward to those Red October submarine duels, though!

[Haxus]

Later...

Building Size Limit
Building size limit is far less than 104M cubic meters, reports a small size.

Aha there is the reason the size limit was disabled. The size limit calculation was copied from spacecraft so it is based on construction quality, which cannot be configured for buildings. I changed it to calculate the size limit based on Q255, to get the largest value 104M cubic meters.

Orbit Over City
Orbit over city order lists every building in every city in range.

Fixed orbit over city and land at city commands. Now they only show capitol and HQ buildings, in addition to town squares at old style cities.

Building Facility Thresholds
The volume thresholds are strange for building designs. Why does it take so much more volume to add a home? or an arena?

Changed buildings so additional arenas, fields, homes, lounges, shops, stores, etc. cost the same amount of building volume as the first. This will enable many existing designs to provide more of what they do. They will likely need to be refinalized and/or republished to benefit from this change.

Buildings Not On Sensors
A bunch of the buildings in my city and on my base are not showing up on sensor screens.

Fixed a bug that caused some buildings to think they were underground.

[Mr. Mortius]

Hey look, an update! I need to rebuild all my cities again!

[Haxus]

You yourself observed that cities were now invulnerable to attack and that balance was needed.

I apologize for the negative effects of the change. It was not my intent to force anyone to rebuild anything. Relatively few cities were affected by these changes, only those of extremely large size.

[Haxus]

Please read and post any objections there.

http://hazeron.com/mybb/showthread.php?tid=138

[Mr. Mortius]

Yes, I was looking for military balance, I just wasn't expecting it to force a redesign of civilian cities with millions of population. Whatever's easiest to implement, I suppose. The improvement to military balance will be significant from this update. I'm just getting tired of everything breaking every couple of weeks, sorry if I seem snappish. It'd be nice if one system was decided on then kept, instead of switching the rules so frequently.

This is not the first time I will have likely lost millions in loyal population due to updates, and I was told last time that I shouldn't expect something like that again for a long time.