[MOD] The Final Frontier

[primem0ver]

What stops the AI from doing exactly this?

I really don't think the AI uses queuing. If so... then it is a problem. A well written AI, however, would adapt to every moment of the game, not deciding on the next build until the current build is done; so I don't think this will be an issue. Then again... Stellaris did write a pretty bad AI so anything is possible. My assumption though is that I don't have to worry about it.

EDIT: I was a primary programmer for a Civ 4 mod that modified the DLL. I know from first hand experience that Civ4 never queued anything for building. We do have evidence that the Stellaris AI doesn't queue either. I was testing the AI at one point and the AI kept switching where a building was being built, implying that it makes a decision every time a buildling is done. The 1.8 patch notes mention that it fixed this issue (meaning it won't constatnly re-decide where a building should be... hopefully they didn't just start using the queue as a quick-fix but intelligently made the AI not do this).

How would these work scientifically?

LOL. Well I already told you that and you offered the suggestion to do it anyway. Unless by your question you are asking, what would work best scientifically. If that is your question. they both make sense... a building would certainly represent the number of people that might be involved. On the other hand, it would probably be a global network of smaller buildings (and hardware) so.... what do you think?

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

I really don't think the AI uses queuing. If so... then it is a problem. A well written AI, however, would adapt to every moment of the game, not deciding on the next build until the current build is done; so I don't think this will be an issue. Then again... Stellaris did write a pretty bad AI so anything is possible. My assumption though is that I don't have to worry about it.

EDIT: I was a primary programmer for a Civ 4 mod that modified the DLL. I know from first hand experience that Civ4 never queued anything for building. We do have evidence that the Stellaris AI doesn't queue either. I was testing the AI at one point and the AI kept switching where a building was being built, implying that it makes a decision every time a buildling is done. The 1.8 patch notes mention that it fixed this issue (meaning it won't constatnly re-decide where a building should be... hopefully they didn't just start using the queue as a quick-fix but intelligently made the AI not do this).

That's fair.

LOL. Well I already told you that and you offered the suggestion to do it anyway. Unless by your question you are asking, what would work best scientifically. If that is your question. they both make sense... a building would certainly represent the number of people that might be involved. On the other hand, it would probably be a global network of smaller buildings (and hardware) so.... what do you think?

Yeah, that. I misphrased.

I think I'd prefer a building for gameplay reasons. There are more planetary tiles than module spaces, so it'd make planetary construction at least a little more interesting than popping down 3-5 copies of the same building.

 

[primem0ver]

I think I'd prefer a building for gameplay reasons. There are more planetary tiles than module spaces, so it'd make planetary construction at least a little more interesting than popping down 3-5 copies of the same building.

Makes sense. It we do it as a building, I was going to make it planet unique anyway. So you prefer building over planetary project? FYI project buildings are planet unique as well so they cannot be duplicated. (The project should disappear from the building list after the modifier goes away as well).

 

[primem0ver]

We are on schedule to release tomorrow! Just some game-play testing left. I have updated the changes description on the previous page for the most part.

 

[primem0ver]

The update is now live! Please feel free to comment on the new features. Good or bad...

 

[Culise]

This mod looks rather interesting, and I downloaded and installed it for the first time. However, I do have a minor question. I picked up a few Terraforming Candidate colossal worlds, but they do not seem to have the terraforming button. It may be because I am new to the mod and am thus unaware of all the particulars of this new feature, but I feel I must ask: is this intended behaviour? It may be better to either permit these to be terraformed, whether it is to colossal equivalents of the base planetary planets (if possible) or to more mundane-sized versions, or alternately to block them from receiving the Terraforming Candidate trait in order to avoid cluttering the expansion planner.

Other minor notes, either localization or questions born of my own lack of understanding:
1. sr_silicate_microbes name and description do not appear.
2. Either the No_Magnetic_Field name does not appear, or the localization was configured to include underscores rather than spaces. The capitalization makes the case not entirely clear to me.
3. I may be missing something obvious, but is there some way to view how many terraforming resources I have stockpiled?

 

[primem0ver]

This mod looks rather interesting, and I downloaded and installed it for the first time. However, I do have a minor question. I picked up a few Terraforming Candidate colossal worlds, but they do not seem to have the terraforming button. It may be because I am new to the mod and am thus unaware of all the particulars of this new feature, but I feel I must ask: is this intended behaviour? It may be better to either permit these to be terraformed, whether it is to colossal equivalents of the base planetary planets (if possible) or to more mundane-sized versions, or alternately to block them from receiving the Terraforming Candidate trait in order to avoid cluttering the expansion planner.

Other minor notes, either localization or questions born of my own lack of understanding:
1. sr_silicate_microbes name and description do not appear.
2. Either the No_Magnetic_Field name does not appear, or the localization was configured to include underscores rather than spaces. The capitalization makes the case not entirely clear to me.
3. I may be missing something obvious, but is there some way to view how many terraforming resources I have stockpiled?

I appreciate your feedback very much. I have not had the chance to fully play the new update because I have been busy mainstreaming the way I keep the workshop description updated. I will get to that soon. To answer your questions:

• Main question: No. This is not intentional; it is also odd because all other terrforming links work the way they should (at least before this update). I will have to look into why colossal world links do not work.
• 1-2, I will look into this. I think I forgot to add no magnetic field. Easy to fix.
• 3. Unfortunately no. This is a major annoyance with the way that the vanilla handles resources and the adding of custom collectible resources. There is not any way that I know of to show how many custom resources you have stored. I will make changes if I find a way. One way to get an idea is to track how many sources you have. This can be done by marking the resources strategic. Unfortunately the game automatically puts a premium on strategic resources which is the only way you can keep track of how many o these resources you collect per turn. Since some of some of these resources are produced by buildings, the AI will automatically build these everywhere without putting AI weights of 0 except under appropriate circumstances. I have already done this to a degree. However, the other problem is that the AI keeps wanting to make trade deals for these resources since it prioritizes them instead of building its own stations to mine them (which is ridiculous since they can be found almost everywhere).

If I cannot find a way to create a UI for viewing how many of each resource you have, I will end up creating an optional patch, which makes terraforming resources strategic. This will at least allow you to track how many sources of a resource you have. People will just need to be aware that if they use this patch, the AI (which sucks to begin with) is going to offer all kinds of trade deals that real people can take advantage of.

 

[primem0ver]

@Culise
The issues you reported should now be fixed (except 3 of course).

 

[ZomgK3tchup]

Here are some notes of varying usefulness I jotted down while playing for a couple hours today:

Spoiler

- The starting event where you choose a season modifier doesn't tell you what the season modifiers do.
- Is Betharan Stone supposed to appear on your home world? In vanilla, it's blocked from doing so.
- Are you supposed to have modifiers like High Gravity on your home world? In vanilla, negative modifiers are blocked from home worlds.
- There's an extra space in the localization in "Colossal Boreal World" between "Boreal" and "World".
- I found a barren world that has oxygen as a resource? Is this WAD?
- Seedlife Manufactories are superior to Orbital Hypoponics Farms. Maybe combine the two into one building or make their roles more distinct?
- The reservoirs clutter the building menu. Not really sure what you could do about this, though.
- There's no reservoir that gives engineering bonuses.
- The reservoirs increase my capacity for these resources, but I don't know what my capacity actually is. Would there be a way to make a Situation Log report about what resources you have and their capacity? The game currently does something like this to track amount of Contingency ships you've destroyed.
- Some of the new buildings give adjacency bonuses. Vanilla seems to be moving away from adjacency bonuses since, apparently, the AI isn't good with them. Might be something to think about.

 

[primem0ver]

@ZomgK3tchup and everyone... regarding his list of things found. Thanks for the feedback! The fixes will be uploaded soon as I am still hoping to create a terraforming materials report.

• The starting event where you choose a season modifier doesn't tell you what the season modifiers do. WORKING ON THIS.
  
• Is Betharan Stone supposed to appear on your home world? In vanilla, it's blocked from doing so. FIXED
  
• Are you supposed to have modifiers like High Gravity on your home world? In vanilla, negative modifiers are blocked from home worlds. FIXED
  
• There's an extra space in the localization in "Colossal Boreal World" between "Boreal" and "World". FIXED
  
• Seedlife Manufactories are superior to Orbital Hypoponics Farms. Maybe combine the two into one building or make their roles more distinct? FIXED
  
• There's no reservoir that gives engineering bonuses. FIXED - Methane storage now does this. Reduced its adjacency effect to one to compensate

Regarding the other things you listed...

I found a barren world that has oxygen as a resource? Is this WAD?

This actually does happen on occasion. I added this possibility when I learned that Saturn's moon Rhea has both oxygen and a small bit of carbon dioxide on its surface. My guess is that this happens with very cold moons because of the nearby gravitational source and the low temperature which causes density to increase (for the gas). I fixed the code so that this only happens with moons.

The reservoirs clutter the building menu. Not really sure what you could do about this, though.

Yeah... not sure there is anything I can do. I have asked Paradox to use a relevance system for ordering the building menu better... put buildings with same resource production at the top but I am not sure when or if they will do this.

There's no reservoir that gives engineering bonuses.
The reservoirs increase my capacity for these resources, but I don't know what my capacity actually is. Would there be a way to make a Situation Log report about what resources you have and their capacity? The game currently does something like this to track amount of Contingency ships you've destroyed.

I am still looking into a way to give feedback regarding resource collection without introducing bad side effects.

Some of the new buildings give adjacency bonuses. Vanilla seems to be moving away from adjacency bonuses since, apparently, the AI isn't good with them. Might be something to think about.

EDIT: I will keep this in mind.

 

[primem0ver]

Ok... I updated fixes as I still can't find an easy way to report resource amounts. I will keep looking for a way to do this.

EDIT... oops.. haven't completely fixed the first one in the list. Will update as soon as that is done.

 

[primem0ver]

Some changes:

• The season modifier stats changes now appear in the tooltips for the home planet season selection dialog/event.
• Changed first moon distance for gas giants as it was too big and caused overlap of other orbits in several cases. This will only take effect in a new game.
• You can now replace a building with a project successfully. This was possible to do before, but it would not proceed from the initial building to the actual project (upgrade) automatically.

I realized I forgot to add some events related to discovery of new strategic resources. They have been added and I am now testing them.

 

[Daedwartin]

Might be a problem. The commonwealth is laughing at the pitiful xenos! We shall save them from the cruelity of trying to survive a Gas Giant by invading their world and moving them off world to work my farms and mines.

TD:LR, you forgot to make sure your new worlds can't have primitive civs.
EDIT: Nope, can't invade the world. So that's 8 dead pops in the future.
EDIT: Oh, found another one on a warm gas giant.

Interesting thing about both however....They are both orbited by a habitable planet.

EDIT: So just loaded a new game up, and went to observe. They are only spawning on war gas giants and warm gas dwarfs,

You screwed up primitives.
ONE LAST EDIT:

The Gas giant just underwent one hell of a change. Would have been even sillier if it was then a tomb world. At same time then...It also be better as at least a tomb world can be colonized. What makes this conflict interesting was they did it while my colony was on one of their moons.

 

[primem0ver]

You screwed up primitives..

LOL. Wow... that is very strange. I will have to look into why this happened. I will fix it ASAP.

 

[primem0ver]

@Daedwartin
Thanks for posting this bug find. I found the problem but it requires more time than I have right now. This is not the result of recent changes. You are the first person to see this. Probably because it was a rare occurrence before the primitives slider and the pops died before people could find them. I should be able to post a fix (that requires a new game of course) tomorrow. (well... within the next 24 hours since it is already Monday and I haven't slept yet.)

 

[primem0ver]

@Daedwartin and everyone
The primitives bug and several other issues have been resolved (though if you have the primitives issue you will need to start a new game to get rid of it). If you find more issues, continue to report them. Thanks to everyone who is!

 

[von Sachsen]

Not so much a bug report as a question/balance concern. What is the goal as far as habitable worlds? It seems that there is a very high amount leading to it being difficult to colonize them all, even just the close ones. Is this intended?

 

[primem0ver]

Not so much a bug report as a question/balance concern. What is the goal as far as habitable worlds? It seems that there is a very high amount leading to it being difficult to colonize them all, even just the close ones. Is this intended?

You bring up a good point that I would like to discuss with everyone. I haven't really dealt with this issue directly yet. My intention was to increase the number of habitable worlds about 25 or so percent on average. However, after some testing, the increase for a 1x game for 1000 with 11 ai and 2 fallen civs stars is about 80% more. For this scenario doing 5 starts, the average number of habitable worlds without my mod was 90.4. The average for my mod was 163.

The slider doesn't have nearly the effect it is supposed to in either scnario. "0.25x" only reduced the number of worlds enough to actually be 0.68x
With my mod it was 0.87x. I suspect this partially has to do with the fact that my mod allows giants to have more than one habitable world orbiting it. Actually... that is probably the reason my mod has a significant increase in habitable worlds anyway. So while most vanilla systems only have one or two possible slots for planets, mine in several cases have 3-4 when a warm or brown giant exists.

I have brought up this issue in the past. People seem to be ok with lots of worlds but I do admit it makes it harder to win if you use sectors. (I don't for several reasons, one of the main ones being that the Sector AI just plain sucks and both starves my citizens and lowers their production in favor of energy). I think the best way to remove this problem is to keep warm giants from having more than one habitable world in orbit... though that isn't entirely realistic. I can also try playing with the numbers a bit.

So what do people who use this mod generally want?

 

[Forderz]

Been looking forward to playing this for a while!

 

[Culise]

I personally may be new to the mod and thus lack the experience of those who have played through multiple games, but I wouldn't mind seeing relatively few worlds that are perfectly inhabitable right out of the tin with a decent number of terraformable ones waiting for a minor push in the right direction. I tend to play at the very lowest habitability levels in either case, however, so that may be a significant factor in this opinion. There's also due consideration that should be given to how well the AI can handle terraforming under the new rules; if it becomes central to the game by making it even more critical to unlocking habitable worlds and the AI has issues matching a human's pace, it would make the game easier.

EDIT:
Also, it's really odd, but I just started a new game. For my oceanic homeworld, the game triggered no less than three "select your seasons" initialization events. Either my homeworld has twelve seasons, or something's gone a bit peculiar on my end.