Slow Research Needs to be Slower (Full Version)

All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Distant Worlds 1 Series



Message


Krelos -> Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 1:01:44 AM)

Basically its this, I set the research speed to the lowest setting and, at the lowest starting tech level, inside 30 years I have all techs roughly 65% finished, not counting the ones that become instantly 100% when a race trades you their special one.

It's just not very slow, which wouldn't seem like a bad thing it the speed wasn't labeled "very slow".[:D]




Fishman -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 2:19:40 AM)

Maybe they should just discard the labels and just make it free-form data entry. Instead of "very distant" or "very slow", you specify HOW distant or slow, with the values of the original being specified as a guide.




Krelos -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 2:56:04 AM)

I like the sound of that. Then I could make it take 100+ years to finish the tech tree, which is how I would like it personally.




HsojVvad -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 3:10:37 AM)

I find research too slow at the lowest setting. Oh well, I guess we have different ways how we like to play the game. By any chance, are you making lots of research bases?




YvesDelecroix -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 3:14:25 AM)

Now we are in the realm of "super-epic"

But, yes, I second the numerical value idea with guidelines added. Is this in the suggestion list already?




Fishman -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 3:24:44 AM)

No. I figure it can get lost in the circular file as easily here as there, so meh. Feel free to repost it if you think that having it get lost twice is better than once.




Krelos -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 6:59:17 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Davor

I find research too slow at the lowest setting. Oh well, I guess we have different ways how we like to play the game. By any chance, are you making lots of research bases?


Actually I never assign any to be built, they get done automatically, even with the station designs obsoleted and deleted. I even remove the research components from my spaceport designs so I ONLY get it from the specialized stations.

In the 10 or so years in-game since my first post I have completely finished everything 100%, nothing left to research at all.

40 years, all done, on Very Slow.
Its a 1400 galaxy and I do have nearly 170 colonies with almost 600B population... So yeah, a lot of research points getting thrown around, but no more than the AI has at this point.

I think the reproduction is too fast as well. Seriously, 40 years to get to 600 Billion? That ought to take... well, IRL it would take several hundred years, but even a full 100 would feel more believable. ATM it's as if every race is just ants wearing different Halloween costumes with the queens all spitting out new eggs non-stop. Which I suppose works for the insect races... but I'm Playing Humans who, at the shortest, need 16 years to a generation, if you ignore certain social problems that suggests...

Mmm this is turning into a rant, so I'll stop there... Maybe I'm just trying to make the game more long-term than I should?




Krelos -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 8:04:00 AM)

Alright, I think I figured how to hot-wire the game to do what I want.
First, I lowered the races reproduction rates down to 1.01% and 1.02%depending on how fast they were to begin with.
Then I lowered their intelligence down in a gradient base on how high it was. 50 is as low as it can go, so everyone under 90 got dropped to 55, then the 90's went to 60, and so fourth on up to the Quameno who are still the smartest, but now have only 90 intelligence. I also removed the extra research bonus from all races that had it.
I wanted to leave the intelligence alone and just give everyone a big negative research bonus, but found that 0 is the lowest that it can be set, so I had to make them all stupid.[:(]

Now, tomorrow I'll start a new game and see where things are in 40 years. [:D]




Fishman -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 8:09:38 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Krelos

I think the reproduction is too fast as well. Seriously, 40 years to get to 600 Billion? That ought to take... well, IRL it would take several hundred years, but even a full 100 would feel more believable.
You wish. In 1960, there were only 3 billion people in the world. Today, we have nearly 7, and this is occurring in a fixed environment in which people have no additional space. If we suddenly had an entire galaxy available to us, and all sorts of shiny technological tools to make making more people a painless and inexpensive process, the population would EXPLODE.

And not all of your population is growth, either. In a typical game, for instance, my population may only double or triple, going from my initial starting population of about 8-9 billion to a population of 22B in my own race, while my empire population will explode to 300 billion inside of 15 years...because of the races I annex and conquer.




Krelos -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 8:30:15 AM)

That is a good point you make there, but in my particular case, the 600 Billion was more than 90% Human. My empire made up ~17% of the galaxy population.

I started a new game up to see how the lower reproduction rates would work and it seems pretty good to me. My Homeworld had 16B to start with, and was gaining about 1M every two days. That might be a bit slow, since its estimated that 216K people are born each day here on Earth. So, going off that, I should be able to simulate real world reproduction rates, or close to it, by setting the human rate to 1.02. It was 1.14 originally, 7x faster.




Fishman -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 8:35:59 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Krelos

I started a new game up to see how the lower reproduction rates would work and it seems pretty good to me. My Homeworld had 16B to start with, and was gaining about 1M every two days. That might be a bit slow, since its estimated that 216K people are born each day here on Earth. So, going off that, I should be able to simulate real world reproduction rates, or close to it, by setting the human rate to 1.02. It was 1.14 originally, 7x faster.
Yeah, but real world reproduction rates are currently being pushed down by the fact that, really, we want people to stop, and we are running out of resources to sustain these people with. Imagine what would happen if reproduction again became an entirely good thing assisted by cloning technology, and we had unlimited space in which to expand into? Population growth exploded after about 1950. Imagine what effect a sudden removal of all space and resource constraints would have.




Krelos -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 8:53:12 AM)

Well, I don't want to get into projections of how cloning might affect a population growth rate, cause really that's an unknown, and whats more, the game makes no mention of it.
But, I do know that, according to wikipedia [:D] the real world peak was hit in 1963 and was 2.2%, which would be 1.022 in the DW scale so far as I can tell. So it would seem that that is the rate I want to use as a baseline for reconfiguring the other races.

According to the population growth calculator it would take more than 300 years for 6B to balloon into 600B at the peak 1963 2.2% rate.
Just over 140 years for a starting population of 25B, which is probably what I started with before.

This combined with making everyone stupid should make research take quite a bit longer.
Hopefully being stupid only effects the bad trades the AI accepts, and doesn't make them act more randomly.




Astorax -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 9:25:29 AM)

Making the races generally less intelligent will also reduce everyones spy efficiency and supposedly the smarter races put more goodies on their ships (extra shields/armor?) or perhaps just extra redundancy.




Resan -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 9:41:34 AM)

You should probably increase the pop grow a bit. 2,2% was years ago. Current tech with unlimited space would probably mean a higher number.

People live longer and alot fewer die from disease at a young age.

Maybe 2,8 or so...

BTW: where do you change this? Editor? Or can you do it in the gamefiles somewhere?




Fishman -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 11:29:14 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Astorax

Making the races generally less intelligent will also reduce everyones spy efficiency and supposedly the smarter races put more goodies on their ships (extra shields/armor?) or perhaps just extra redundancy.
Intelligence also affects ground combat efficiency, so making everyone stupid will bias combat towards the stronger races as everyone is now stupid.




Gertjan -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 12:20:08 PM)

slow could be a bit slower, like 10% or so (imho)




Krelos -> RE: Slow Research Needs to be Slower (4/16/2010 8:38:59 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Resan

You should probably increase the pop grow a bit. 2,2% was years ago. Current tech with unlimited space would probably mean a higher number.

People live longer and alot fewer die from disease at a young age.

Maybe 2,8 or so...

BTW: where do you change this? Editor? Or can you do it in the gamefiles somewhere?


A large part if the population rate decline IRL (it's about 1.2% now) has to do with the culture changing. It used to be totally normal to have 8 kids, now if you have more than 4 people start to think you're weird. It would take more than unlimited space and resources to change that, though it probably would change eventually.

There's a races.txt in the game folder, all the race details are in there. You can change a lot of little things, like who gets what bonus tech. You could give your race the Super Laser if you wanted. [:D]
It says not to overwrite the original, but I did and it seems to work just fine. Probably ought to make a backup just in case though.




Page: [1]

Valid CSS!




Forum Software © ASPPlayground.NET Advanced Edition 2.4.5 ANSI
1.65625