Ok first i have to say its important to play the mod - i believe many didn't try it for meaningful duration and lots of talk is guessing / theoretical. I see some suggestions around that have nothing with the mod -_- its a bit dishonest/unhelpful.
But you can totaly crap land turn into 2-2-0 useful tiles and good production base.
Yea I've sort of gone in all directions as to what fungus should be. I like the idea of boreholes being more of an upgrade to mines. Echelons should be the upgrade to solar. Boreholes being at 6 E means you don't need to make solar. Solar can sometimes get a bit better than 4-1-4 with a lot of raising and optimal echelons, but it's a fair approximation.
So that leaves forests and fungus. They could be all-arounder options like they are now. Forest at (3/2/2), fungus at (2/3/3) or your similar 2/2/4.
I feel like Forests should be slanted more to minerals, and fungus either to nutrients or energy. When I think of fungus I think of it being food first, then its energies from planet second. I feel like it would be weaker in minerals. Plus it's a little strange that ecodamage makes terrain that would make even more minerals.
I feel like fungus shouldn't be better than forest probably. It's a tough one to rate because by the time it gets good you would have to plant it. A lot will depend when it gets its improvements. Giving it too much too early means you don't have to terraform at all. I ran into that curiosity by making a fungus faction.
It's something I need to mod too. I might go with Forests returning to 1-3-0, reaching 3-3-1 with TF/HF. The 1 E from Hybrid Forest represents Fungus being good at energy. And fungus reaching 3-1-3 or so with techs. Maybe 3-1-4 a bit later. Though those techs need to come before the very end of the game. Right now they're so backloaded that you probably wouldn't re-terraform unless you got Manifold Nexus.
Ok first i have to say its important to play the mod - i believe many didn't try it for meaningful duration and lots of talk is guessing / theoretical. I see some suggestions around that have nothing with the mod -_- its a bit dishonest/unhelpful.
I agree that that happened in the previous thread. But, this thread isn't specific to The Will To Power. I took that as implicit in Tim's framing of late game economic issues in vanilla. Now, if he actually mean to discuss only TWTP, then the OP should be edited to that effect. But I doubt that was his intent.
The game implemented all of this already. They just forgot that forests don't grow on Arid land.
Another thing I forgot about fungus is that +2 ECON doesn't give it +1 E per square like other terrain. And obviously the need to keep a decent PLANET rating, which may or may not be hard depending on your SE set.
Nutrients is great but 4-0-2 wouldn't be overpowering. I suppose it's all up to you, if you see fungus more as food or energy. But I do think it should be low minerals the more I think on it. It would set Planet's ecology apart from Earth's more, not having them both as good all-around terrain. And other reasons, it means I don't have to give out clean minerals on fungal pops necessarily. Planet does the job for you of lowering your ecodamage, lol.
I might try a bit weaker in nutrients myself for a bit. Maybe 3-0-4 or 3-0-5 but some of that energy coming later in the game, after all the standard terraforming upgrades. The worry I always have is making fungus too good and then that's all you plant. I suppose fungus factions have to be tempered a bit the better fungus is. In the stock game I had to give Cult +1 all around to make fungus workable, because it takes a ton of tech to reach that 2-3-3. Getting anything more than Centauri Meditation (1-0-1) was getting quite far into the game.
Yea it probably doesn't come up too much for most people's SE sets. It's hard to get +2 ECON while not ruining your PLANET.
The other question is what are the candidate techs to give Fungus upgrades? That's something I'm trying to decide now.
I agree that planting anything in arid in more difficult than on moist.
However, since forest spread by itself it loses the point. Unless we make it not spread at all.
the game's geographic model is wrong.
I suppose I can maybe half give them this one, at high altitudes some cloud types might be below the panels.
but water raising up hundreds or thousands of meters from pollution isn't realistic.
Probably the only clean and easy way to do it is to disable them altogether. Anybody would cry about it?
- No forests on arid tiles - that would be interesting ^^ i guess one could place condenser first and then forest everything :P. Thinker AI is crazy whole map turns green eventually once they get to spam condensers and boreholes.
Plant fungus is available sometime in midgame - definitely not early so fungus can't be used early as much. it has that downside compared to forests.This is controlled in the #TERRAIN table. In the stock game it comes at Tier 3 with Ecological Engineering. In my mod for some reason I changed it to Centauri Genetics, which is also Tier 3 and it's when I give mindworms and spore launchers. I've gone back and forth about whether E.E. is an Explore or a Build tech. I've currently got Fungicidal Tanks available with E.E., to make it a little more difficult to remove fungus until the midgame is getting underway.
- About forests and 12 turns build time - it does looks excessive. I usually put 2 formers together when i want some forest early. The thing is that in WTP at least - resource yields are unlocked - so forests are not mandatory. Its often better just to place a mine at start (4 resources compared to 3 of forest) because first bases you start and settle near nutrient resources. That way base ends up working for example 4-1 nutrient tile (add solar later) and 0-4-0 mine and spams colony pods for a while. Some growth micro might be required. So 12 turns doesn't hurt in the mod much. But yeah i wouldn't mind having it build in 6 or 8 turns as well - the point is you don't want too much 1-2-0 forest anyway, its not that good. Few tactical forest are enough and then they spread - sometimes you want to remove them -_-.
- Fungus experiment - maybe we can experiment with no minerals. I like some extra food because then one can, coupled with Recycling tanks, work a mine or borehole for minerals. And fungus eveything - what i have been doing :-[ - won't be good idea anymore. The Manifold Harmonics adds 1-1-2 at 3 planet.. sa say you get it between Tech 6 and 9 it will turn tiles into 3-0-3 + 1-1-2 = 4-1-5.. good but still not op as now.At tech 9 its 5-1-5 and final is 5-1-6. Gaians will end up with 6-1-6.
It looks interesting - it does still look very heavy on energy.. and all this food might be worked on extra specialist and teching will be very fast. Maybe limit it at 4-0-3 instead of 4-0-4.. i think it would be good idea to reduce amount of energy in game. And then it needs to be playtested ofc.
- No forests on arid tiles - that would be interesting ^^ i guess one could place condenser first and then forest everything :P. Thinker AI is crazy whole map turns green eventually once they get to spam condensers and boreholes.
- That Echelon Mirror idea is interesting - making it say 4 or 6 energy. I suppose it would be interesting to try something with it.
Solars can be boosted by more than one Echelon Mirror. So usually you want to do 50/50 or maybe a bit less. Typically your solars will get +3 or so. At high altitude that can be 4-(0.5)-7 or so. But the Echelon tiles only get to 4-(0.5)-4, so it averages out at 4-(0.5)-(5.5) or so. The main thing that holds farm/solar back is that it takes a very long time to terraform. Farm, enricher, solar or echelon, plus a lot of raising the terrain and paying energy on top of that. That's why no one does it really even though it's the most powerful per tile. Especially if you drop borehole down.
Plant fungus is available sometime in midgame - definitely not early so fungus can't be used early as much. it has that downside compared to forests.
What idea? Did I miss something?If forests aren't that good anymore there is no point to make them so expensive. I really don't understand the logic behind this. If you want to make them the option for bad land why punish players with bad land by making their terraforming take much longer too?
In the same way solar panels could be reduced to 4 turns too.
The things you need to compare are the yields for the tiles. A farm on a good tile is 4 turns for 4 resources. A forest is 12 turns for 3 resources. As it is if you have subpar tiles you don't build a forest on it you don't use that tile and instead expand somewhere else.
If you want to make forest more expensive due to the spread 8 turns would still be OK, 12 is excessive. Note that in your mod forest spreading is not even necessarily a boon as it increases terraforming costs if it spreads somehere you don't want.
Increasing facility costs would achieve the same goal I think? Whether they are cheap and weak or expensive and more powerful, it ends up being similar. I kind of favor the latter after going through similar design decisions with native life. Because otherwise each facility is just a quick tick box in every base once you get the tech.
I think especially in the early-mid game a lot of the energy comes from +2 ECON. +2 ECON is extremely strong I think you should boost up Planned and Green. I think it would be hard to run much SEs other than Fund/FM/Wealth. +2 ECON only diminishes maybe around when you get thinkers/transcendi. Or 6E boreholes
Reducing its yield by 2 minerals and 2 energy will reduce base income by 2-4 minerals and 2-4 energy in total. That is pretty much unnoticeable thing.Its 80+ energy for 20 bases which a player should have. I suggest leaving Borehole at 0-4-4 or revert them to 0-6-4. Lets try reducing energy in game a bit at least. They are plenty strong even with 0-4-4.
QuoteReducing its yield by 2 minerals and 2 energy will reduce base income by 2-4 minerals and 2-4 energy in total. That is pretty much unnoticeable thing.Its 80+ energy for 20 bases which a player should have. I suggest leaving Borehole at 0-4-4 or revert them to 0-6-4. Lets try reducing energy in game a bit at least. They are plenty strong even with 0-4-4.
Another thing i got surprised a bit with Condensers now. So I built condenser as usual on that nutrient resource and destroyed solar collector. Result here I lost 2 energy and got 0 food + eco damage + lost turns. Eghm. Yes i made 3 tiles green that i don't use. This Condenser I built currently its clearly a mistake. They are situational now - if i put to use other tiles then its worth it. I don't mind the change just stating what happened - didn't expect it ^^.
You also have a display bug - this should be fixed i rely on those tooltips for example.
- Also not that fungus is good food/energy but no mineral.
Yes rainy farm with nutrient resource - i usually place condensers on nutrient resources. Well Condenser has a strong effect player can reason about it and place it on good spots. This might screw AI a bit. AI does grow scary big cities - thats part of why it is hard to defeat - so this is likely a nerf to thinker AI.
I don't really like condensers not on resources - so that +1 nutrient sounds good. Soil enrichers are also nerfed so it could be ok.
It would be a good idea to observe how AI places condensers - and does this harm them.
Reducing minerals or boreholes slows everything down: units, facilities and secret projects.
You also have a display bug - this should be fixed i rely on those tooltips for example.
One way to fix industry abuses would be to hold all mineral costs constant and make industry a multiplier on the minerals produced in a base. So +2 industry would multiply minerals incurred per base by 1.2 but all costs stay constant. There would be issues with rounding and it may not be feasable to implement.
Would it be a good idea to add +1 energy per forest square to the tree farm?
Energy is much more powerful than minerals most of the time. Energy doesn't pollute, you get commerce, and earlier facilities to boost it.
QuoteWould it be a good idea to add +1 energy per forest square to the tree farm?
I was thinking about this, but I wouldn't do it. I would make Tree Farm maybe slightly cheaper, Hybrid Forest as well (since its obviously they are not strong as they were with 1-2-1). Not much, just slightly..
QuoteEnergy is much more powerful than minerals most of the time. Energy doesn't pollute, you get commerce, and earlier facilities to boost it.
Yeah i tend to agree with this. As the game goes on minerals are just too slow - i tend to rush ton of facilities - especially in newer bases. You can wait 10+ turns to build Childrens Creche or rush it for 80 credits or so - i know what i choose. Late game one can rush units all the time even when they are double cost compared to facilities.
So there's too much energy in general in game - which speeds up tech a lot. Thats why its ok for me to nerf forests and borehole and for example %energy facilities. One can read that T-Hawk AARs for example - he always gets to research each tech at 1 turn only.
You are constantly hurrying production from very beginning with extra credits and it never got to 100% even to end game.
At the end of the war Boeing-Wichita was producing 4.2 Superfortresses per working day for an average of 100 a month, which was the military's schedule. The plant had also reduced the number of manhours to produce a single B-29, from157,000 (the average required for the first 100 bombers), to less than 20,000.
Another argument to this is that people most often are in need of minerals and not energy. Meaning energy without minerals cannot make it alone.
You probably feel you have excess of it by micromanaging hurrying all the time. I agree it could be limited but just a little. Say 10-20%. No more.
You can make a partial payment to avoid waste in high production bases.
What would be convenient is to have Hurry Button - just click and its done. No confirmation box, no numbers. You can set it to 100% (so waste some min) or as much as its needed + minerals (thats more complicated..) but nevertheless it would be quality of life. One can go through bases and just quickly click Hurry Hurry Hurry Hurry Hurry Hurry Hurry until there's no more money and be done with it.
1.Very end game production seems excessive and over the need for anything.- Hm nope i don't feel mineral production is excessive at tech 10-11.. As i said its hard to get many bases above 50 minerals.. at least until you get those super projects. Good lategame units cost 140+ minerals.. so thats 3+ turns per unit for strong bases, weaken ones are 5-6-7. At that point when player converts everything to military production - its possible to overrun AI - but it takes a long time to get to that position. Maybe if you spam 10+ nexus mining satellites, but even that is limited by base size, and get all mineral boosting facilities then minerals would be too abundant.
Quote1.Very end game production seems excessive and over the need for anything.- Hm nope i don't feel mineral production is excessive at tech 10-11..
2. Energy - yes too much - it makes tech go to fast.