Strategy Mode Discussion

I thought by organic he meant methane.

I just noticed a hole in the formula. Basically, since the amount of fuel needed to reach full fuel is divided by 5, the vehicle will never get fully refueled. Can someone make a new formula for the refueling?

Tarpy wrote:

Fuel probably wouldn't be hard to make a difference between. When the player is making a TO, he would specify what type of fuel would the engine of a vehicle (or anything else for that matter) run on.

Types of fuel would be:
1.Coal-Found underground
2.Oil-Found underground
3.Natural Gas- Found underground
4.Uranium-Used in nuclear power
5.Organic-Produced on farms
6.Electricity

Now, you can both make a TO that is used to transport fuel (tankers,trucks etc.) and stationary TO buildings used to store fuel (gas stations, fuel depots).

Like ammo, land vehicles would only need to be within a certain radius of one of these TO's and it would refuel.

Water vehicles, would need to dock first, get really close to the transport vehicles or if they are big enough, air vehicles can land on them aswell.

Air vehicles would need to land first, or if the player has some pretty advanced technology, can be refueled in mid air as well.

By default, all vehicles in the radius of the TO will have the same priority in refueling  (ones with full fuel do not count). However, the player can prioritise one or multiple vehicles, and only those vehicles would be refueled by the TO.

Now, here's a formula of how fast will each individual vehicle be refueled if it is in the radius of the TO with fuel (IMO distance shouldn't really matter, but if someone disagrees just say it).

Sr=((maxF-curF)/5s)/nV

Sr-Speed of refueling (kg (coal, uranium and organics) or l (oil and natural gas) per second)
maxF-The maximum amount of fuel the vehicle can store
curF-The current amount of fuel the vehicle contains
5s- Five seconds
nV-Number of vehicles that are being refueled

Any opinions are welcome.

Great work with laying out all that concept.

Fuel would be easy to define for the vehicle, but hard for the Supply TO's. The reason I said there was a problem was that Fuel TO's have to be fed compounds from your cities, but Ammo TO's don't. Ammo is created out of thin air and given to troops, because it is so insignificant. Fuel, on the other hand, is a significant resource and is tracked in game. I was thinking there might be a way we could tag all the compounds used as Fuel with "Fuel", so that any fuel TO's would know to collect and store those compounds for when vehicles come to resupply. However, if there are multiple possible fuels and the fuel your vehicles use changes as you change them in the TE, it becomes harder for your TO's to keep track of what to store up on.

For that reason, I think the player will have to designate to the TO, once its been built or recruited on the map, what compounds to store for fuel, taking the pressure off the computer in having to figure it out and letting the player just decide. That way, say the player shifts from using coal powered vehicles to gas powered vehicles, he just selects his fuel TO's and designates the compounds they should store.

By the way, when I mention that TO's knowing what compounds to store, I'm referring to building TO's being able to have automated exchanges of good like in the Anno games. Small agents will go from one building to other buildings, fully automated, and carry goods back and forth. It's an idea I have had for a while on how to handle resource exchange within a city, and I will be posting on it sometime tomorrow.
 
As for refilling fuel, I think that is complicating something that doesn't need to be too difficult. We can just have units refill 1 litre/second, or refill 5% of the total every second.

Diferent fuels require diferent ways of storing them. Coal can just be stored in a box, where for oil you need a storage capable of holding liquids, and for electricity you need batteries. That means that you will probably need completelly diferent resuply vehicles most times when you want to change the fuel used.

Refilling at a maximum speed of 5% of the max capacity per second looks good to me.

Actually, Tarpy's formula would completelly refill vehicles, it would just take an infinite amount of time to do so.

Yes, that's another one of the problems I see with it. I think the best way to handle it is to treat buildings that resupply units with fuel the same way as any other building that is storing compounds.

Whenever a building has Stockpiles inside of it, or Cisterns or Gas Tanks for that matter, you can designate to that building what specific compounds to store up on. You don't designate when you are designing it in the TE, but during actual gameplay. In addition, any building with storage capabilities will automatically have this button on its UI, which when enabled would allow units to take compounds it is storing, and when disabled would prevent units from taking compounds from it.

Then, using this framework, you would just have to create some storage buildings on the front lines, or wherever you want to resupply your vehicles at, designate to it what compounds to store up on (i.e. what compounds are used as fuel), and then enable units to take compounds from the building when in its vicinity. That way, if there's an impending attack, you can easily send over your tanks to resupply their fuel and then head out to fight, with barely any micromanagement.

Daniferrito wrote:

Actually, Tarpy's formula would completelly refill vehicles, it would just take an infinite amount of time to do so.

Oh, okay, not too long then.

Okay, so ammunition and fuel are handled, so it all falls down to just food. Should military units require food at a regular pace? How should food be supplied by the player to the units?

Maybe it could be handled by putting food in Military Centers (MCs) or whatever building is used to resupply military units as Rations, and handle distribution same way as ammunition and fuel. Or maybe use a specific vehicle that carries the food and idle military units nearby will use it up.

Since the military units will be made up of members of the player's species, of course they should need food. Maybe the rate should be slower than the civilian population so the player doesn't have as much of a mental workload.

My two cents if you want 'em.

But then the question is, will the units have a food bar that would slowly decrease and need to be refilled? What would the effects of zero food be?

Also, if military units consume food actively while deployed, wouldn't all other deployed units have to consume it as well? And wouldn't feeding all those units be a huge micromanagement disaster for any player? Wouldn't it be a huge strain on his factories?

What about treating units' food the same way as fuel? each unit carries food to eat for two days (Or more with specific FPs in their clothes). Whenever a unit is close to a supply vehicle, it will refill its capacity. The units will slowly but continuously consume their food just by being alive.

Whenever a unit's food reaches 0, it will start to slowly lose health, dying in about one day (depending on the creature this could be higher or lower). It will also lose stats, like highly decreasing movement and any physical action (like melee attacks) and decreasing slightly accuracy with guns, between other effects.

I dont get how factories would get affected by this. At some point, we can just ignore cooking and make all food the same, so the only thing needed would be to move the food to the soldiers.

Probably, with supplies in general, we will want to make all supply vehicles hold great amounts of suplies, so the player is not needed to keep them moving between supplies generation facilities and the frontlines.

So would the food meter be refilled with compounds consumed by your species, or would it just come from an infinite source like ammunition?

When I mentioned a strain on your factories, I really just meant a strain on your economy and your player's attention. Imagine how much effort it would take to be producing the food to feed all of your active soldiers, as well as constantly checking to make sure your troops have full food, especially with multiple armies, having to send TO's that can resupply them with food when it gets low, and then also worrying about everything else. Also remember that food decays, so if the armies don't eat it soon it will go to waste. It feels to me like it makes the player have to hold the hands of his army to keep them constantly well fed. I remember that in the new Company of Heroes, even just keeping my soldiers and near heat spots during cold periods became a hassle.

But, at the same time, I still think food is very important to keep as a resource that armies need to be supplied with.

Well, citzens will eat food, so soldiers should do too. If we are simulating food at all, every creature should consume food equally, just by being soldiers they should not stop eating.

Yeah, I see what you mean. I was thinking that units only eat when populated into SC's, but that would detract a lot from the Awakening Stage and be quite unrealistic. So I guess food would be the same as fuel in how it is stored and delivered. The food bar, once empty, would begin to drain at the health bar until the unit is dead. I think detracting from the unit's stats would be too much of a penalty.

So that closes the discussion on supply. I will be adding that to the wiki soon.

On a separate note, I have some new topics to open up.

Where should Solar Panels be unlocked as an FP in the Research Web? Which Research or Invention? Or should they get a new one and where would that new one go?

As I wrote this I forgot one of the topics I wanted to mention, so that's it for now.

A new invention under advanced materials?

Ah, good idea. Should we call the invention "Photovoltaic Energy"?

Actually, I think it would fit better under Electricity, now that I look at it, because Advanced Materials is the stage at which Carbon Fibres are being developed, so that seems too late for solar panels.

Okay, so the next step to finishing the Researches and Inventions is assigning each one a cost, in Research Points. Then, we assign certain tasks or actions that, when done by the player, contribute Research Points (RP) towards that Research or Invention.

Also note that we are discussing the triggers of these Researches and Inventions, i.e. what actions contribute towards discovering them. The content unlocked by these Researches and Inventions is not the main focus of this discussion, but do help in explaining the context and significant of the many Researches and Inventions in game.

The first one on the list is Socialisation. Socialisation has three Inventions under it: Language, Cooperation, and Communities. Remember, the full Research Web is downloadable in the OP.

For Socialisation, I was thinking we make it cost 40 RP. The triggers for it would be communicating with other species members. Every time you communicate with another member of your species, you generate 1-4 RP towards Socialisation. Discovering Socialisation enables the player to recruit other species members to their pack, like in Spore. However, at this stage, they only follow you around. They do not listen to you as their leader.

This point of the game is similar to the late creature stage and early tribal stage, in case you want to use Spore to help understand the setting.

So, can you guys think of some other triggers for Socialisation, because all I can think of is communicating with other species members.

What about gifting? Like if bring some food back for the young ones of your species and look after them? Or if one of them is getting attack you come to their aid?

That is a good idea! I would extend it to just giving in general. Giving any food or other compounds to other species members would generate RP towards Socialisation. Does 3-5 RP per action sounds good?

I think it would be hard to quantify to the computer when an instance of coming to a species member's aid has taken place. Could you think of a specific way to define it?

I hate to bring another mode into this, but shouldn't something like that be available in organism mode as well? Animals bring food back to their offspring all the time, it's a normal part of life for a more evolved species, like the wolf or lion, and elephants will aid a sick or injured herd member by bringing them food or water until they recover.

Yeah I think about 4 RP would work. Dinoman, I guess each time they do that they would just increase their RP, which would eventually lead to each animal having the chance to progress.

As for how to define "coming to the aid of", perhaps if animal A is under attack and HP goes below a certain point, then if another creature of type A joins in the fight and animal A survives then RP increases.

Explain RP to me, I haven't read this thread thoroughly, since I'm more focused on Organism mode and the stages therein. Since this is strategy mode, I figured it was talking about Awakening and onwards, therefore excluding therefore excluding Multicellular and Aware.

dinoman9877 wrote:

I hate to bring another mode into this, but shouldn't something like that be available in organism mode as well? Animals bring food back to their offspring all the time, it's a normal part of life for a more evolved species, like the wolf or lion, and elephants will aid a sick or injured herd member by bringing them food or water until they recover.

This is in organism mode. When we say communicating with other species members, or giving food, that is only possible in a 1st/3rd person perspective. What we are discussing right now are the specifics of how the transition will work from Aware, through Awakening, and to Society.

Inca wrote:

Yeah I think about 4 RP would work. Dinoman, I guess each time they do that they would just increase their RP, which would eventually lead to each animal having the chance to progress.

As for how to define "coming to the aid of", perhaps if animal A is under attack and HP goes below a certain point, then if another creature of type A joins in the fight and animal A survives then RP increases.

To clarify, I do specifically mean a range of 3-5, not just a fixed amount of 4 every time.

The problem is, combat is not like World of Warcraft (best example I could think of) where you enter combat mode when fighting, and after ending a fight you officially "Disengage". There are no states of being in combat or out of combat. Every attack is independent of every other attack. Thus its pretty hard to tell the computer "So and so is under attack".

I don't think that is specific enough for the computer to use. Can you think of something to eliminate the problem I posed?

dinoman9877 wrote:

Explain RP to me, I haven't read this thread thoroughly, since I'm more focused on Organism mode and the stages therein. Since this is strategy mode, I figured it was talking about Awakening and onwards, therefore excluding therefore excluding Multicellular and Aware.

Well if you want to get involved in this discussion, you ought to check out some of the concept for the Strategy Mode. What we are discussing right now is mainly described on the Awakening Stage wiki entry, and the Society Stage wiki entry.

Ok 3-5 RP then haha.

Erm let me have a think. We can't have a variable that tells the comp unit is in combat?

Surely we can say if a unit takes a number of damage hits with less or equal to a length of time between them we can say they are under attack. Then we have established they are under attack. In fact we can flip that to say that a unit is attacking (damage dealt with short length of time between). If a unit is then under attack by two units, we can match them to be the same type (or of the same tribe) and then see if they are teaming up or helping each other out.

This procedure does need work, can you see if you can work with it a bit? I'm not sure how to define one units attacks from another. If we can't figure it out, we'll just have to scrap it.

But an attack could also be drawn out over several hours as you cooperatively hunt a prey down with other species members. Also, for setting a specific time interval in which attacks occur, what would that inequality be? Also, what if the fellow species member is competing with you for the kill (Remember tribes don't exist yet).

I have a general idea of what series of triggers you are going for. This is what I drafted up:

Pseudo-code

Code:

If an organism is attacked
If discovered_Cooperation = false
If attacker equal to species of organism = false
If attacker equal to species of player = true
Then set attacker = predator
Then set organism = prey
Then tag prey as "attacked" for 10 seconds

Code:

If prey is attacked
If attacker equal to species of prey = false
If attacker equal to species of predator = true
If attacker equal to predator = false
If attacker equal to player = true
If prey is tagged as "attacked"
Then generate random number (3-5) research points for player

However as you can see this leaves a lot of loopholes.

I think I was able to make it foolproof with the line

Code:

If attacker equal to species of player = true

Because this means that only another member of the player's species can activate this event, and only the player himself can fulfill it. This will prevent other organisms from around the planet triggering this event for the player. However, I also had to add in the line

Code:

If discovered_Cooperation = false

Because once Cooperation is discovered, any other pack member of the player's pack can contribute towards research, which means the computer would have to run a different process looking like this:

Code:

If prey is attacked
If attacker equal to species of prey = false
If attacker equal to species of predator = true
If attacker equal to predator = false
If attacker equal to species of player = true
If prey is tagged as "attacked"
Then generate random number (3-5) research points for player

However, that still leaves the final question to answer. What should the time interval be?

Time interval would have to be a bit more than the average attack time. Don't know if we can work this out yet until we know how often an animal can land an attack.

Don't we want other tribes to gain RP from this sort of thing though?