Function Part Discussion

@penumbra espinosa- We already said and agreed on that:

NickTheNick wrote:

I also agree with Dani on not making a single FP for missiles. Rather, I think customizing a missile allows for greater diversity, instead of all nations using the same generic one, or several similar ones with different variants.

Tarpy, I think stirrups should just increase the speed of mounted units by 30%, and thats it. In real life, they make riding easier without falling, and allow riders to more easily use weapons while on horseback. To simulate that, we would use the speed boost. The player could even just attach stirrups to a saddle and save it as a TO in the Tech Editor, and then whenever they want to create mounted units they just drag out the Saddle+Stirrup TO, instead of the saddle and stirrup separately.

However, do note that saddles are different from stirrups. Stirrups are the metal rings riders put their feet on while riding to maintain balance, whereas saddles are, well, saddles. We could even just remove Stirrups, and just make it that when the Invention Stirrup is discovered, all mounted units automatically receive the 30% bonus, saving the player the trouble of having to produce stirrups in their factories, and to go and edit all their mounted units to include stirrups. Actually, on further consideration, I think that's a better idea. Drop stirrups, and instead put a bonus for the Invention.

However, that still leaves Saddles, which is what you guys are mainly talking about.

I don't think the 26% to 26% thing could work, because it doesn't factor in strength of the organism. I'll think this over the night, but in the meantime are there any ideas on how to factor in strength? Remember that organisms do have a Weight Capacity value.

I realized there is quite a simple solution to this. We already have the weight capacity system in place. We can just make it so that riders are treated as just extra luggage, or weight. An organism being used as a mount would have a specific weight capacity, and the mass of their rider would contribute to the total weight they are carrying. Then, the modifier to movement speed of the mount is just based off of how heavy the rider is in a simple manner, just like calculating the speed of a soldier based off of the weight of all the weapons and armour he is carrying. Does this sound good?

Sounds good to me. I didn't know we already had a formula for that. By the way, what is the formula?

Well, the variables to take note of are:

W = Weight Carried (kg)
C = Weight Capacity (kg)
m = Modifier

1 - (W/C)/2 = m

That will always yield m as a percentage ranging from 50-100%. That is multiplied by the unit's movement speed and attack speed, and the final answer is that unit's total attack speed and movement speed with the weight they are carrying factored in. Weight Capacity will be a representation of how strong an organism is, and will be determined back in the Aware Stage in the yet to be explained process for determining a creature's strength. Speaking of which, we don't have any concepts on how to calculate the speed of organisms either.

Actually, we do. After the last podcast, we searched for it, and scio found a thesis that gave a formula to calculate runing speed of dinosaurs. It even acounted for local gravity. I dont remember where it was, but scio probably does.

Oh, wonderful! That's great to hear. Anyways, in the case of a rider and a mount, the rider's mass would be W, and the weight capacity would be from the mount. The m would apply to the attack speed and movement speed of the mount, but mounts usually don't attack.

I think that's all there is to saddles. Just to recap,a saddle is required to be on an animal before a unit can ride it?

Generally no, but for the sake of the game, perhaps it should be.

Sorry for bringing up a old topic, but I thought of a use for bookshelves and burial chambers. For every 150 normal burial chambers, it would add +1 to religion. For every 50 royal burial chamber(aristocrats, kings, etc) would add +1 to religion, but every 200 royal burial chamber would add -1 to happiness. Bookshelves would add +1 to science and culture every 150 bookshelves, but in times of unhappiness, it would increase unhappiness by 5 every 200 books, as if your citizens were writing about their ideas.

Portal out!

Stupid double post!

PortalFan1000 wrote:

Sorry for bringing up a old topic, but I thought of a use for bookshelves and burial chambers. For every 150 normal burial chambers, it would add +1 to religion. For every 50 royal burial chamber(aristocrats, kings, etc) would add +1 to religion, but every 200 royal burial chamber would add -1 to happiness. Bookshelves would add +1 to science and culture every 150 bookshelves, but in times of unhappiness, it would increase unhappiness by 5 every 200 books, as if your citizens were writing about their ideas.

Portal out!

No offense, but that's not a very good use. FP's should be meaningful. If it takes 150 burial chambers just to add 1 to conversion, thats quite meaning-less. Distinguising between burial chambers and royal burial chambers and their effects makes it too complicated. Also, same problems with bookshelves.

Additionally, there are already FP's that give those exact same bonuses but on a much larger scale, effectively nullifying any use for these. Also, bookshelves are a very specific and unimportant object for an FP, they are already implied under Records Storage and Library.

PortalFan1000 wrote:

Stupid double post!

Fixed.

By the way, this isnt an old topic at all. It is simply currently inactive until we make a new FP list.

I knew that this topic was still active, but what I meant was the thing I was talking about. That had already had been deemed as useless. Am I at least going somewhere with this?

This topic has been inactive for some time now. Actual discussion ended back in July 15th. Now, that may not seem like much, but compared to the amount of activity it had back in late March (when it was created), it's very much dead. I'm not sure if it had that much activity because of the reddit post boom or not, either way, if you have an idea on how to improve this thread, it's openly welcome.

Now, onto the discussion itself. Nick has developed a new FP list, inheriting most of the FP's of the old one, and it's now in the OP. As you can see, it's now neatly sorted into sub-categories, which also means that now we won't really be going down a linear path. Instead, we'll be choosing which one of the sub-categories will we be doing next.

Now, IMO we should start discussing housing, since it would really be pivotal to creating SC's.

Let's start with the basics first.

The size of the housing FP would not be constant. First of all, the player would have to select how many individuals can a housing FP store. The formula for the size of the housing FP would be something like:

Hh=Ch*1.5
Hs=Cw*Cl*10*Cn

A little better explanation: Hh is the height of the housing. Ch is creature height, so as you can see, the height of the housing FP obviously wouldn't depend on the amount of individuals it stores. Hs- is the surface of the housing FP. Cw is creature width and Cl is the creature length. Cn is the amount of individuals it stores.

Let's start this thread up again. So, give your ideas and opinions.

This is what I have for housing in my notes:

Structure – Must have minimum dimensions of 3x3x2 meters. Gives a +3 bonus to the population cap per every 26.25 m^3 of additional volume.

I played around with the idea of having Structure FP's scale to match the size of the organism, but really it does cause a LOT of extra complication, math, and work. I don't think its worth the effort.

I don't think there's any need to scale houses. Just a standardise the building size. Would we be standardising all building sizes (but still allowing for customisation of course)?

Problem is, you can't store a dinosaur in a 3*3*2 area, and an ant doesn't need that much living space.

Ants are smaller than the smallest a player's organism can get, and dinosaurs are about the largest. I don't think it would be very easy for a dinosaur sized creature to become intelligent, because they would need so much food to support them.

Anyways, I'm not saying its a realistic approach to have standardized effects, but its the best option over the boatloads of work of accommodating all possible sizes for all possible FP's. The player can always just make the housing larger for the larger creatures, so it looks to size, and for smaller creatures they could leave it at its minimum size. The minimum dimensions are not that large compared to how small intelligent species would be getting.

I've actually just got an idea.

The game would sort creatures by it's size, right (part of the niche system), so we could put standardized values for each of the size (small, mid-large, huge etc).

That still means like 6-7 different effect settings per FP. Also, what happen when one species takes over a building of another?

You could just compare the size group and if they are the same or similar. If the building belongs to a race alot smaller then they can't takeover it, maybe just reduce it for resources or something, but they if it is a bit bigger they can use it, but not if its comparatively huge. Maybe just go up or down the scale two groups as the limits.

But it depends on the FP. Some FPs you need to be the same size to use, while others simply are meant to fit people in (housing). This would mean on the spot calculations for every single building to see how your size effects it. Also, it would be a heck lot of micromanagement if the player had to filter through an SC, every time he took one over, just to separate the buildings that are obsolete due to size restraints and demolish those.

Yeah I see what you mean? I think we will have to standarise building sizes then, and not have them vary from race to race. This won't be the best option for staying in touch with realism, but it may be our best option.

Maybe house sizes have to be equal or greater in size to be used, whilst other structures need to be the same size?

But the problem persists past housing. Libraries, arenas, constabularies, barracks', there are countless FP's that we would have to reanalyze multiple times to come up with their effects and restrictions for all the size ranges.