[1.10.04] Planet w/no surface water allows Water Purification research

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[1.10.04] Planet w/no surface water allows Water Purification research

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Shadow Empire >> Tech Support >> [1.10.04] Planet w/no surface water allows Water Purification research

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[1.10.04] Planet w/no surface water allows Water Purifi... - 12/14/2021 5:48:11 AM

Elver

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Joined: 6/25/2020
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In my current game, I'm on a Seth-class planet, which have as their defining feature no surface water. Despite this, Water Purification technology is researchable. Upon researching it, of course, I cannot build Water Purification assets, because they require rivers or lakes to be built. I'm not sure if this is a general oversight in the game logic, or if the code checking to see if the tech should be researchable is treating canyons and escarpment as rivers (I'm bringing these up b/c I know tooltips refer to these as rivers). I'm fairly certain I've seen this exact same behavior on Cerebus planets as well. In any case, in keeping with other similar techs, Water Purification should not be researchable if it's never going to be able to produce assets.

[Edit: it's probably worth mentioning again that this same sort of situation is true for Volcanic Energy Tapping and Wind Traps, though with Wind Traps it's a non-issue since you always start with them and thus your research council won't waste time and effort proposing it.]

< Message edited by Elver -- 12/14/2021 4:20:31 PM >

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RE: [1.10.04] Planet w/no surface water allows Water Pu... - 12/14/2021 2:30:54 PM

Culthrasa

Posts: 189
Joined: 4/16/2017
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As far as I know there is no ingame logic for techs. It is up to the player to avoid "worthless" techs. With water and vulcanic activity being the two most obvious categories, but even airplanes can fall into that category for a long time (say on a moon).

(in reply to Elver)

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RE: [1.10.04] Planet w/no surface water allows Water Pu... - 12/14/2021 4:17:39 PM

Elver

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Joined: 6/25/2020
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This is definitely not the case. There are a variety of techs that the player will never be able to research if it's flatly impossible for them to use them - specifically, Water Atmospheric Recomposition, Methane Synthesis, and Deep Core Mining.

There are others that should be in the same category, like Wind Traps, Volcanic Energy Tapping, and Water Purification, and aircraft techs - though with aircraft techs, you need to have literally no atmosphere for them to be rocket-only; even 150mbar is enough for me to generate a jet that can fly on Tech 5 turn 1. However, Wind Traps, Volcanic ET, and Water Purification will never be viable no matter what on certain very broad categories of planets. With Wind Traps it doesn't matter b/c you get that on turn 1 and your research council will never waste discovery effort by proposing an impossible tech, but VET and WP they'll happily propose on geologically-dead and dessicated planets and moons. These absolutely should be in the same category as Methane Synthesis and WA Recomposition: only discovered if they could possibly be deployed on a given planet.

< Message edited by Elver -- 12/14/2021 4:21:37 PM >

(in reply to Culthrasa)

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RE: [1.10.04] Planet w/no surface water allows Water Pu... - 12/16/2021 7:19:26 AM

Vic

Posts: 8262
Joined: 5/17/2004
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I agree in principle and made some notes. However it is not so obvious a fix since I do not want these technologies' absence to be a way to signal the player on fully shrowded world there is no surface water or volcano's.

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(in reply to Elver)

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RE: [1.10.04] Planet w/no surface water allows Water Pu... - 12/16/2021 2:42:41 PM

Elver

Posts: 114
Joined: 6/25/2020
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Hmm, hiding volcanic activity does make Volcanic Energy Tapping more difficult - but given that you can determine there's no surface water as soon as you get a mountain hex in your territory (b/c Wind Traps will report "Lack of Water in Atmosphere has to be lower than level 4"), it feels like that on most fully shrouded planets it will be difficult if not impossible to hide this by making Water Purification undiscoverable.

I'd argue that the ideal for these techs would be to not allow them to be discovered until you've discovered a hex where the associated asset could be built, but that does seem like it'd require new code logic be added since I'm pretty sure everything else like this is based on planet-wide conditions. That, or disabling environmental tech exclusions based on how shrouded the planet is...

[Edit: Actually, on a Random-class, Full-Fog-Of-War, Drop-Me-Into-A-Game planet there's still indicators on the Planet Statistics overview that would very broadly point to these things on turn 1 - loading up such a game lets me see the planet's rain scarcity and geological activity even though the more-detailed reports are absent. If RS is 4 and GA is no, I can immediately conclude both these techs are useless. GA being yes won't tell me if there are volcanoes, ofc, but I can tell if there's no chance whatsoever they can exist...]

< Message edited by Elver -- 12/16/2021 2:51:13 PM >

(in reply to Vic)

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