Sea Of Stars - development thread

[Drybreeze]

Does anyone know why some of the early research projects are pre-researched (regardless of whether I select Pre-Warp or any other "age" of the game during launch setup)... while others (such as star-fighters, tech 0) are not?

This one here "Intense Ion Generation" I've tried everything I can to have it a pre-cursor to Ion Weapons, however Ion Weapons INSIST on being researched at the start of the game no matter what I do. It's super-wierd having Ion Weapons REQUIRE Intense Ion Generation to be researched first, but Intense Ion Generation is not yet researched while it's child project Ion Weapons is. Very odd.

In the below example I've set it to "prewarp tech" to ensure it's on, and at least doesn't look super-weird... but that's a poor solution. Ideally I'd like to switch Ion Weapons off until they're researched by the player...

Maybe a work-around would be to swap the Project ID#'s... but still I'd love to know what's going on here. Any suggestions?

Is this again something to do with races in the Picard Era mod I'm working off, perhaps?

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Drybreeze

Is this again something to do with races in the Picard Era mod I'm working off, perhaps?

Drybreeze; remember one thing, my intentions (which I think our Trek Team pulled off very well) was to
make our Star Trek The Picard Era mod adaptable and viable to use no matter which DW gameplay method
one chose. Sandbox, any of the scenarios, etc. To do so, meant developing many of the mod files so that
research, components, biases, policies, and so on worked across the board and in conjunction with the
scenario map I created as well. So as I told you in our pm conversation, you must denote how the flow
develops with each research project you alter.
[:)]

[Drybreeze]

@ehsumrull1
K good then when I get to editing races that will sort itself out, that's good. I thought it must be somehow linked to races, but I was concerned that perhaps it was somehow hard-coded that particular research project #'s or component ID's or something were forbidden to particular race ID's or.. I dunno there's a bit of weirdness and counter-intuitivity with the resources so thought mebbe it was a similar thing going on.



Okies, well I've completed the resource list and icons... I don't think there's other resources I need to add, but that will become more apparent with more testing and once I release a test version for feedback from you good ppl.

Resource icons I've published (as small icons).

Current components list is as follows:


LASERS (basic close-range beam weapon)
High Intensity Laser
Weaponised Laser
Tactical Laser

PLASMA WEAPONS (medium range medium damage beam weapons)
Rapid Phase Plasma Gun
Rotary Phase Plasma Gun
Heavy Phase Plasma Cannon

TORPEDOS
Rupture Torpedo
Pierce Torpedo
Quantum Torpedo
Phased Plasma Torpedo
Microstellar Burst Torpedo (old icon - will be replaced)

MISSILES
Concussion Missile
(Several other missiles are included in the mod but not listed here)

COLONY BOMBARDMENT
Orbital Bombardment
Orbital Extermination

POINT DEFENSE (anti-missile and anti-fighter rapid close range weapons)
Point Defense Cannon
Spitfire Point Defense

ION and EMP WEAPONRY
Ion Cannon
Ion Pulse
Ion Trapping

HYPERSPACE INTERRUPTION
Hyperspace Denial System
Quantum Disharmonic Pulsor
Advanced Hyperspace Denial

WAVE WEAPONRY
Rapid Magnetic Rupture
Gravity Well Project

HEAVY BEAM WEAPONS
Higgs Inversion Beam
Higgs Field Rejection
Higgs Focused Rejection

FIGHTER BAYS
Standard Fighter Bay
Advanced Fighter Bay

ARMOR
Layered Mass Armor
Nanite Woven Armor
Reactive Armor
Adaptive Kinetic Armor

SHIELDS
Magnetic Shields
Monopolar Shields
Active Nanite Cloud Shields
Direct Interception Shield
Combination Shielding
Remote Shield Recharge

PROPULSION
Solid Fuel Propulsion
Ion Propulsion
Focused Microwave Propulsion
Directional Fission Propulsion
Directional Fusion Propulsion
Subwarp Oscillation Propulsion

MANEUVERING
Maneuvering Thrusters
Efficient Maneuvering Thrusters
Intense Maneuvering Thrusters

HYPERDRIVES
Thorne-Stagg HyperDrive
Anti-Boson HyperDrive
Ripplefold Jump System
Psuedo-Planck WarpDrive
Contained Dark Energy Drive
Vacuum Injection Skip Drive

REACTORS
Fission Reactor
Fusion Reactor
Quantum Reactor
HyperFusion Reactor
StellaCore Reactor
Stellar Radiation Collector

RESOURCE ACQUISITION
Mining Engine
Gas Collection Unit

FUEL CELLS
Small Fuel Relay
Efficient Fuel Relay

OTHER STUFFZ
Standard Life Support
Medical Center


As you can see, some are the old icon style and some are the new icon style.

The above components represent a little under half of the total, and there's probably that many again that will end up in it by the end of the research-tree being developed (including race-specific tech).

It's all beginning to come together very nicely now.
I've been working heavily on the research tree, which is now made insanely easier by Sabranan's most awesome modding tool.

In fact the game has become so playable now that I prefer it to the vanilla, and ALMOST prefer it to the Picard Era mod that inspired me to make this mod in the first place. Srsly, that mod's amazing. I'm finding that I'm playing longer and longer when "testing" because I'm coming across fewer and fewer things I want to adjust.

One of the very most critical things I had to change was messing around with reactors, fuels, capacities, and resource distribution. There are primarilly two kinds of reactors (in various grades) - Fission (or Nuclear) Reactors which burn Uranium, and Fission (and variants) which burn Hydrogen. There are a couple of others like the StellaCore Reactor which burns Nitrogen, but by far the most common is Fission (which you start with). But one unit of Uranium produces enormous amounts of energy, far greater than any reactors in Vanilla or Picard Era mod. Therefore I had to reduce the fuel cell capacity, and now I need to create some ship designs that only have 1 fuel cell. Larger fuel cells are simply not required, and I found that I was rapidly burning through stocks of Uranium fuel when creating new fleets and stations.

There are a few things like that which I've had to improve, and now I'm thoroughly enjoying "testing" the mod. I'm not far from being able to offer a test alpha for anyone interested in trying it, however before then I'll most likely publish something showing the game as I'm playing it to give a bit of a run-down on how things are set up in it.

Time is limited for me during the week, as I work insane hours, however the bonus to that is that I have 3 day weekends, so once my renovation work and other chores are done I can spend some decent time in the evenings working on the mod.

Ok that's about it for tonight, it's my bedtime. I hope to show some in-game pics tomorrow, and my plan currently is to address some more interface button upgrades tomorrow also.

[Hattori Hanzo]

I like the mix of old and new graphics for your icons

ps: and I'm interested in testing the Alpha too [:)]

[Drybreeze]

Thx Hattori

The old icons will all be replaced soon and then I'll differentiate between components that require luxury or manufactured resources to make them, and ones that only require raw resources.

I'll let you know as soon as I have something self contained and ready to play...it'll be good to get feedback on it from you.

[Hanekem]

Very interesting, but should Lasers be the long range weapons and Plasma a more close in bruiser weapon?

[Shogouki]

Are the weapon and defense equipment for ships and stations going to be balanced and not like the vanilla tree where some weapons simply beat others hands-down removing much if any use of researching them?

I also like the idea of the plasma weapons being close range, slow firing alpha-strike weapons as opposed to the way they are in vanilla.

[Drybreeze]

ORIGINAL: Hanekem

Very interesting, but should Lasers be the long range weapons and Plasma a more close in bruiser weapon?

Yes you're right. I should clarify by saying that lasers start off as the most basic weapon, and rapidly increase in strength and range, leading to other "spin-off" techs, which include Plasma. So while lasers are directed beams of photons (with a theoretically unlimited range), Plasma Weapons are in fact projectile plasma... which is like a super-heated state of matter... the matter that exists within the fission detonations inside a star, for example. It dissipates and loses heat rapidly, so while it does lots of damage up close it loses damage potential very quickly. Thank you for raising that, I'll make sure to have the components reflect it.

ORIGINAL: Shogouki

Are the weapon and defense equipment for ships and stations going to be balanced and not like the vanilla tree where some weapons simply beat others hands-down removing much if any use of researching them?

I also like the idea of the plasma weapons being close range, slow firing alpha-strike weapons as opposed to the way they are in vanilla.

I am going to a great deal of effort to ensure that not only do the weapons progress in strength and range in a logical and purposeful way, but also that their costs increase realistically as well. In addition I'm ensuring that the resources they use are as accurate to real-world science (or intuitively extrapolated to "suspend disbelief" for future-tech). It isn't going to be science-graduate accurate, but it'll be much more real-world based than vanilla is for example.

One of the most interesting techs which I will be including at the very most developed end of the tech tree is something that we're beginning to investigate now in real-life physics... the physics of information. I'm going to incorporate this into the tech tree to form what might seem almost "magic" technology. Information manipulation will allow your scientists to control the physical world by manipulating the very fabric of what makes things tick.

Running a brain-twisting thought experiment for real shows that information is a physical thing – so can we now harness the most elusive entity in the cosmos?

- New Scientist Magazine article, 11th May 2016.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

- Arthur C. Clarke.

[Shogouki]

Very cool! I can't wait for more developments!

[Drybreeze]

I'm just in the process of doing a trial run, where I play through the game making notes for changes.

This particular one is at a point where the game is aaallllmmmost a self-contained game and ready to be played, so rather than doing it in silence I decided to publish it as I went, to invite feedback from you guys.

You can read it here: Sea of Stars - Trial Run 001.

[Drybreeze]

Further updates as a result of latest trial run:

30/04/16

- COMPLETED: Change name of Disruptors research tree to a different weapon name (Trialling Molecular and Atomic Disruption - counteracts the cohesive bonds of molecules and atoms, causing matter to break apart into an explosive plasma.)
- TO DO: Change weapon-fire graphic of Disruptors to something more realistic but differentiate it from lasers and torpedoes.
- TO DO: Change weapon icon for Disruptors to something that is reminscent of the weapon-fire graphic.
- TO DO: Nurf the Disruptor chain of weapons, they're WAY too powerful... make persuing lasers more attractive. Suggest making Disruptors rapid fire but low yield weapons.

05/05/16

- TO DO: Edit Graviton weapon image to look like waves of distorted background image, stars distorting, something like that... waves, wifi style. Not a visible energy weapon but a sort of ... bending of the game image... can only be done with guess-work images in this version but it'll do, just use a typical star backdrop image.
- TESTING NOW: Design a few hypothetical base types... mining stations (light through miltary-grade), space ports, sensor platforms, impregnable hotel thingies, etc. (CURRENTLY TESTING LARGE DEFENSIVE MINING BASES - SO FAR THEY HOLD OFF A PIRATE CRUISER UNTIL THE SYSTEM FLEET ARRIVES)
- TO DO: Make things super expensive to build, so that a player really has to think a lot about where resources are coming from and how they're being spent.
- COMPLETED(works well): Make water a more valuable commodity - oxygen seems to be highly desired by bases and colonies which is perfect.
- TO DO: Consider research technologies which make more efficient use (and therefore less demand for supplies) of oxygen and water in particular - recycling? Other heavily used resources also? Fuels in particular.
- COMPLETED (works well): Drastically reduce the fuel consumption costs of fission reactors. They're cheap and reliable for a reason. Fission is cheap for fuel but highly expensive to build, and so on up the food chain of reactors. Typically fuel is cheap cheap... it's the tech that costs. (TESTING CHANGES)
- TESTING NOW: Drastically increase the desire for fuel consumption at bases and especially colonies. People need to run small motors, generators, etc. See if there's a way to limit or reduce demand of resources after a colony reaches a certain development level. (TESTING)

06/05/16

- COMPLETED (works well): Increase spawn rate of Food Stuffs by a lot. Perhaps replacing basic elements on oceanic and continental and marsh worlds that can be found commonly on other worlds (like aluminium, concrete, etc) (TESTING CHANGES)
- COMPLETED (works well): Increase spawn rate of Uranium, even if it's only in really small percentages... there's far too few key strategic locations for it, and it's a really critical fuel early-game. (TESTING CHANGES)
- COMPLETED (works well): Increase range of torpedos by about 50% and speed by about 15% (TESTING - Unhappy with results due to weapond damage fall-off, have reduced range to only slightly higher than before.)
- TESTING NOW: Either remove Aesthetics as a component in passenger cargo bays, or create a low-tech version (low yield) that doesn't use it as a resource in construction. Passenger transports are being held up and congesting construction yards due to a lack of this resource for private-commissioned passenger liners and it's holding up the show. (TESTING)
- COMPLETED (works well): Ajust Small Fuel Relay and Efficient Fuel Relay so there's an improvement to get Efficient Fuel Relay... (TESTING)
- TESTING NOW: Make Oxygen spawn far more frequently than it currently does... it's a really necessary resource and seems to be rare as hens teeth with the current settings... might need to begin reducing the spawn rate of other highly common resources like aluminium, concrete, and hydrocarbons. (TESTING)

08/05/16

- COMPLETED (works well): Aluminium seems to be too rarely spawned to cater for the demands of expansion. Consider either increasing Aluminium spawn rate, or reducing it's requirement in components.
- CANCEL (not required): Suppliment reactor energy generation in ships with batteries. Much slower energy generation, but much higher energy storage capacity. This will allow vessels and bases to do two things... 1) Use a different type of fuel as a back-up, and 2) Have a large energy reserve ready to be spent after having sat and recharged for some time. (SCRAP THIS IDEA. REACTORS WITH HIGHER OUTPUT AND LOWER FUEL REQUIREMENTS ARE WORKING WELL)

14/05/16

- Alter laser weapons to be longer range but weaker damage. Ensure that the heaviest laser is not much more powerful than the weakest plasma weapon, but range is much greater. - Credit: Hanekem, Shogouki
- See if there's a way to alter the galaxy-view zoom level icons for civilian ships from solid filled circles to something more light-weight such as crosses or smaller dots, so that a player can more readily see state ships in the galaxy view.
- Adjust all ship and base designs to have a much smaller use of reactors and fuel cells, to cater for reduced fuel usage of reactors and conserve uranium in early to mid game.
- Create several smaller scale facilities and their research techs which can be used to benefit colony growth, research rates, etc.
- Begin considering race-specific tech for biological as well as information-based tech trees. Creat Lore behind the races that use this technology, and consider cross-over technology where some can be researched or absorbed by other races along the way, and vice versa.
- Consider replacing biomass as a luxury resource with another less used tech (such as gems or methane) to free up biomass to be more readily available to the research tree.
- Experiment with alternative designs for icons to differentiate between raw and manufactured resources using less subtle graphics. - Credit: Shark7, Francoy, Japhet

[Drybreeze]

I have gone through all weapon components in a spreadsheet and ensured they are balanced and sensible as far as size, energy use, damage, range, speed, etc goes.

I still need to do this regarding the costs of them (resource consumption), however I did that awhile back and I'm confident it's at least very close to what I need. Also, I want to tone down the income both to the private and state coffers since I still seem to be gathering far more money than I want to when playing. I want it to be really difficult to raise funds to purchase fleets, and that resources are carefully considered before spending them. I think the way to do this is to (counterintuitively) DECREASE the value of resources... so that private sector (and therefore state via colony taxes) earns less money per unit of resource traded.

This will be tough since some of the common resources are already being traded for peanuts (silicon, concrete, steel, etc). These resources are found typically on most bodies, especially on asteroids (both metallic and barren rock), as they are the primary components that make up the rocky bodies in the galaxy.

Ion Weapons currently use a very precious commodity to build - oxygen. I might change that. It hasn't run too far up the "unfulfilled requests" column while playing (it's generally far below uranium, steel, and hydrocarbons in demand, for example)... however I'm of two minds whether oxygen should be only a colony demanded consumable or whether it should also be a component in some technologies. I like the balance of demand versus supply for oxygen at the moment, so I'm a bit hesitant to mess with it for now.

[Japhet]

I'm curious, what are your plans with the racial techs, like the shaktur firestorm, and will there be super resources like Korabbian Spice?

[Drybreeze]

ORIGINAL: Japhet
I'm curious, what are your plans with the racial techs, like the shaktur firestorm, and will there be super resources like Korabbian Spice?

Racial techs will not include anything on parallel with either the Shaktur Firestorm or the Korabbian Spice (or associated slug spawnings).

There will be a minimum of four distinct race types, as follows:

1) Relatable (not necessarilly humanonoid but with similar tech and ship and society styles).

2) Biotechnological - a race of creatures that are more like cells within an overall organism, with biological technology including living space-faring vessels, weapons and shields based on things like acids and carapaces. Not quite "zerg-like" - more like a colony of organisms that have found ways to manipulate other living organisms into symbiotic relationships, and occasionally parasitical relationships. A dominant species that finds ways to bring other organisms under it's will, replacing artificial technologies with biological solutions that rely heavily on harvested biomass and the absorption of resources through digestive and food-chain processes that result in abstract but understandable concepts of warfare.

3) Psuedo-physical beings (the "Nephilim") which exist in an alternative aspect of reality, whose tech focuses on aspects that are on the very edge of current-day physics, and extropolate that into really out-there concepts that border on magic and "God-like" but with a believable aspect to them, for example the manipulation of "informational reality" and weapons that unzip matter at a ethereal level.

4) A force of unified machines that are essentially a single organism that finds ways to convert matter into intelligent self-perpetuating beings that form part of a whole in everything they do. Weapons and defenses are similar to humanoid species, but with a rigid and mathematical undertone to everything from ranges to ship designs.

You must remember that races are not part of the original "Sea of Stars" concept on which this mod is based. In that game the races will be entirely player-defined. So... this is all new to me and will take a bit of development.

Any input is very welcome, and now (while it's new and forming) is the time when your ideas can have the most impact on the final outcome, so don't be shy to put them forward.

[Hanekem]

While I understand games are more interetsting with Scarcity, I think part of the beauty of DW economy is that is moving towards post-scarcity.

[Drybreeze]

ORIGINAL: Hanekem
While I understand games are more interetsting with Scarcity, I think part of the beauty of DW economy is that is moving towards post-scarcity.

Sorry I'm not sure what you mean by "Scarcity" or "post-scarcity"...? [&:]



Ok so I've gone through all weapons and cross-compared them to the in-game research-tree and identified a few things.
I've made a colour-coded spreadsheet to help me work through it systematically, and figured I might as well upload it to show you guys.

The below image is a thumbnail preview... if you want to view the full-size thing it's attached to this post. I didn't post it within the post itself cuz it's pretty big and would force readers to scroll right when viewing the forum, whether they were interested in this picture or not.



Colours mean as follows:

GREEN = has a reference in the research tree.
BLUE = requires an edit in the research tree of some kind (notes written in the far-right column)
RED = has no reference in the research tree - they're just orphaned components that can't be accessed by the player at the moment.
PURPLE = Obsolete. Replace or remove.

Note that these components are only the CURRENT ones. I intend to add a whole bunch more... the final tech tree will be around 50 - 100% larger than this.

Soon I'll do exactly this with non-weapon components also... it's making things far easier to have an over-view of what's going on and ensure that techs are in a logical sequence and it has also helped me identify things like that the Disruptor tech-chain doesn't really seem to have any advantages or disadvantages over the laser tech-chain... so why include both except for visuals and sound differences. I'll change them to have one being slower or more powerful or different range. Your suggestions are welcome.

Also the Higgs super-beams and super-areas are totally isolated from the research tree. I want them to be VERY hard to achieve because they're so powerful. End-game weapons.

[Hanekem]

Well, our economy is driven by Scarcity, things are valuable because they are in limited supply,.
In DW, with orbital exploitation, the limitation on resources lessens, the issue is distribution, it is not post-scarcity, but getting there.

Now, one issue, while lowering the resource value would reduce the cash on hand on the civilian sector, wouldn't it also lower the cost of components, meaning ships, stations and what not would be cheaper to both build and operate? So, the thing is you need to find a sweetspot, resources that can go at a lower value and those that need to be more expensive (than their cheaper cousins) I think that fuels are a good candidate for the latter category.
But I am guessing trial and error?

[Drybreeze]

Ah ok now I understand what you mean by Scarcity and post-scarcity and yes you're right.

Also correct about cost of components however this is easily enough countered by the resource amounts required for each component. Halve the value of goods, double the resources needed for each component, and you effectively make it harder to supply the components as well as decrease empire income without increasing the cost of the components financially.

Yep this whole exercise has been a bunch of testing and trial and error. I played a trial run last night and I'm very happy with early to mid game now.

Very very close to being able to release something for you guys to try out...

[Phuket]

Wow great work! I really like what your doing with this mod. I am both interested in this, as well as the actual game you are developing in the future! [:D]

[Drybreeze]

Thx Phuket I'm stoked you are interested!

I expect to be able to release something that isn't complete but is playable and able to get feedback from interested players very soon.




I have created a set of ship and base designs which I am happy with. The datafile designs that load with the game are limited but I figure I can have those as common multipurpose vessels and pairs can simply manually load other designs in game. For example escorts now have a multipurpose boat as well as a torpedo corvette and also a fast attack boat which makes use of good manueverability and the light weight long long nature of early-game lasers. Swarms of only a few dozen these set to retreat when attacked can make a very effective strike force that can even take down a small pirate base (although it takes a VERY long time) due to their guerilla style of light swarming attacks and individual vessels warping out just as their shields expire then back into the battle again when enemy focus is on another vessel. Makes for a very interesting battle.

Frigates I have split into a few rolls, and cruisers also. I am finding that Auto-retrofit is butchering them fast so I am setting them to only retrofit manuallt which works well and isn't tooo time consuming.

I am now making Biomass far more commonly spawned and no longer a luxury item, swapping it with the currently unused "rare gems" resource... I had plans to make gems used in particular techs but biomass is far more important so I'll do something else with gems.

The weapons tech tree is well sorted now and functions logically. I will adjust either plasma or disruptor chains to better differ between them. I will also be introducing spinoff tech branches which boost particular techs all throughout the tree but use colony manufaxtured goods to do it, giving a genuine strategic advantage to empires with colony manufactured goods.

I need to spend some time sorting out the drives and hyperdrives tech chains. .. they're a mess.