Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » New game suggestion: The Precursors
| New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Wed, 02 August 2006 22:34  |
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The idea is to have a galaxy that has already HAD it's day of colonization and perhaps even terraforming and war mongering. And the game starts effectively in the second galactic age.
Many worlds will be have infrastructure in advance, some with minerals lying on the surface.
The idea is to take one host race and seed the stars with both factories/mines as well as some special ships. When a player comes across a precursor fleet they send a transmission to the precursor ship (the player) and claim the ship, then the precursor ship changes sides to the owner. Everyone's allied with the precursor race and they are also allied. THis gives the effect of abandoned ships just drifting out in space.
Using my race switcher, the host race will have technology from several PRT's. Derilict fleets will have anything from minerals to warfleets in them. The best prizes will be cloaked to prevent them from being found too early. The precursors will also have MT tech on some of their ships.
The host can either use a race with 0 to 3 immunities depending on whether people want to deal with terraforming preterraformed planets or not.
Beyond an inital setup stage everything will play out like any other game. The host might even leave a small IT gate network up. Or the host might also leave SD mine fields exploding or otherwise scattered about. The mine layers will be cloaked and spawn a field between two or more ships to prevent detection.
The in a nutshell the idea is to make it look like there was once an empire that dominated the galaxy but is now all but gone. And for all I care the existing races are just split off factions of the ancient race. I mean the multi PRT host race will have something from every PRT that has something to give.
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Wed, 02 August 2006 22:58  |
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Looks fun. I expect the game would be pretty bady unbalanced (depending on who was most fortunate with their finds / has closest hab to the old race etc.) but I think it'd be a heap of fun as long as you didn't try to take it too seriously.
Perhaps you should make it a 1-imm race and publish it's habs before the game - that way there is 1 hab unterraformed, and races could choose between either taking habs similar to the race (so getting faster start at cost of diplomatic problem of having similar habs to most other races) or maybe taking one of the non-immune habs as immune or shiften off to widen diplomatic room.
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Wed, 02 August 2006 23:54 |
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That's a decent idea... I could also use bi-immune. Though, I'm probably going to set the race up something like this:
Name: Precursor/Precursors
Initial PRT: IT
IFE
TT
GR
Habs:
0.36g to 3.68g
-132C to 132C
Immune
Growth: 6%
Econ:
Pop: 1000
15/7/25 No G-box
25/3/25
Tech:
All expensive.
Zero points left over
Or use this race:
Initial PRT: IT
IFE TT ISB GR
Immune
-80 to 80
20mR to 80mR
PRG 5% (10% when I switch to HE)
Econ:
1000/15/7/25 no G-box
25/3/25
Con normal
Bio cheap
Rest expensive. No check box.
technically the inital race doesn't matter, I'll be using HE for growth, CA for terraforming, IT for stargating, IS for pop growing, SD for mining, SS for cloaking ships, WM for making war fleets, and maybe AR for some silly reason like making colony ship bombers. (as one would expect, all the second generation races will be in suspended animation above their Homeworlds.)
When the empire is big and fat, I'll deminish it all over and secret its population (which should be substantial) into some secret nook in space and just leave it there. If anyone finds it, heh.. Who wants to order around an empire's worth of people for pop dropping? At that point the Precursors will probably be IS, if I did choose to do that. I'll probably have to make that fleet the MOST secret fleet of all. Like I can get them more than 2% visible.  Or just say, find the precursors and they win the game, na that's just being silly, isn't it?
I've chose IT cause it's the most expensive PRT, therefore I can morph the race into any other PRT I will be using the tool I made.
So SS, WM, IS, SD, HE, IT, CA, and AR will all be availible (AR I'm taking the colony ships and scattering them about, just for fun, gives people early bombers. OA's will be cloaked and tucked away in some random location. I might even include some tech scrapping packs here and there. Some prizes around planets and some just in deep space or minefields. Hmm... I'd probably play as the precursors, not that I'd have much to do, just sit around and observe.
[Updated on: Thu, 03 August 2006 00:20]
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Thu, 03 August 2006 01:09 |
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You might want to consider using settings more like this:
IT
IFE, TT, GR, ISB, ARM
0.25g to 3.92g
-132^ to 132^
Rad immune
6% growth
1/800
15/7/5 4g
25/3/5
All expensive
More LRT toys
Centered grav (so as not to bais between high/low)
Less factories and mines, so if you decide to queue up autobuilds you won't have to do so many LBU bombing runs with a second race before game start.
Growth in IS freighters will be pretty pitiful though (3%) so maybe it'd be better to take the two non-immune habs to minimum width, up growth to 19%, change econ to:
1/1000, 15/9/5 4g, 15/14/5
With regular switches to CA to get the terra the narrow habs don't matter. High cost mines/fac don't matter much as you won't be building many, terra will be free, and pop is 1/1000.
EDIT: come to think of it, the econ settings are almost irrelevant, you could edit hst to give max tech from year 1, so it's really just about how much stuff you want to be able to pre-build.
[Updated on: Thu, 03 August 2006 01:11] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Thu, 03 August 2006 03:43 |
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I don't yet know how to do max tech with HST editing. I presume it's some large number of resources devoted to each field with the tech settings being the scaling factor.
My idea, (after some testing) was to max out the mines and factories, and narrow the habs some so that the less industralized worlds are the red ones. And the more industralized worlds are the green ones or yellow ones. Narrow habs and TT, should make enough variation.
Also I think I'm going to limit this to a medium map, less worlds to precolonize. The starting year might be anywhere form a few hundred years to a thousand. Depending on how long it takes to tech up and spread out.
What percentage of the map should be preindustralized?
Another idea:
IT
IFE
TT
ISB
GR
1.12g 1.92g
16C 96C
Immune
6%
800
15/7/25 4g
17/3/25
Bio cheap, rest expensive
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Thu, 03 August 2006 03:59 |
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| Captain Maim wrote on Thu, 03 August 2006 17:43 |
I don't yet know how to do max tech with HST editing. I presume it's some large number of resources devoted to each field with the tech settings being the scaling factor.
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I don't know the method, but Wumpus did the edits for the 'Bidding for Techs' game I'm hosting, where each race started with a unique tech advange (which has proved very interesting.)
| Quote: |
My idea, (after some testing) was to max out the mines and factories, and narrow the habs some so that the less industralized worlds are the red ones. And the more industralized worlds are the green ones or yellow ones. Narrow habs and TT, should make enough variation.
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The problem with this is it'll give a massive advantage to races that have habs centered close to to the host race's center habs. So you'll either have a lot of similar habbed races if you publish the habs, or the game will be largely decided by which race chooses the closest habs by chance.
I guess you could force all the players to go tri-immune, so the planet habs instead are representive of how developed a world is likely to be rather than actual livability... Maybe force them to have high build costs to exaggerate the advantage of a developed world. There's still a lack of variantion between race designs though - all 3i doesn't sound entertaining.
Perhaps it makes more sense to just randomly decide the starting level of factories, mines, surface minerals for each planet independently of it's habs. To do this the host would need to be a 3i. The numbers could be generated en masse, but unless you've learned how to set factories and mines in the hst (again, I think Wumpus might know how to do this,) then you'd have to set up precise build queues for every single world. Of course a real drawback here is there'd be no indication before colonisation of the strength of a world, so it turns into a lucky dip.
Dang sorry, all my ideas here seem really negative. I like the concept but am having trouble thinking of a balanced way to make it work.
[Updated on: Thu, 03 August 2006 04:24] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Thu, 03 August 2006 04:23 |
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No immunity, no terraforming, each world will max out on it's own.
Very few will support large populations and thus the factory and mine limits will be autoset. I just need to seed a few hundred planets, and let time do the rest. That is at least my plan.
Here's another race design:
IT
TT
IFE
GR
LSP
RS
0.58g 4.16g
-200C -56C
64mR 100mR
(1 in 14)
20%
1000
10/10/25 3g
14/3/12
All expensive
I figure time will compensate for the tech. This race should also be able to colonize most worlds if I just tell it to focus on bio.
The 20% growth will make IS pop growing much easier.
What did they bid with on bidding for techs?
[Updated on: Thu, 03 August 2006 04:35]
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Thu, 03 August 2006 04:31 |
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| Captain Maim wrote on Thu, 03 August 2006 18:23 |
No immunity, no terraforming, each world will max out on it's own.
Very few will support large populations and thus the factory and mine limits will be autoset. I just need to seed a few hundred planets, and let time do the rest. That is at least my plan.
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I'm just worried that this'll come down too much to players needing habs centered in the same places as the host.
Here's an idea that dodges it:
Choose the level of industrialisation by a formula that favours worlds that have the *worst* habs. Sounds crazy huh? Well, here's a (crap) back story that makes this make sense:
The ancients learned to live everywhere in the universe, but never quite perfected their terraforming technologies, so civilisation became focussed on the gaia worlds - those that they could make into edens. After many years of peace a cataclysmic civil war broke out, for reasons lost in time. The cradles of civilisation, the gaia worlds, were viciously fought over, and all life and infrastructure was utterly destroyed. Those minor colonies, those unfavourable worlds were spared the worst of the ravages, but the populations still fled, or were lost to biological agents.
You could assign a few factories and mines for each extreme hab (i.e. 200 for a '1' or '99' click hab, less 10 for each hab click towards the center.) This means player races can vary, but will want to make sure they can make use of these extreme hab worlds.
The host race would be a no-immune, all very-wide like this:
IT
IFE, TT, ARM, ISB, LSP
0.14g to 7.04g
-184^ to 184^
2mR to 98mR
15%
1/1000
5/9/10 4g (you don't actually need resources from the fac, just to build enough)
10/15/10
All expensive
Use hst hack to get max tech at start (I'm sure Wumpus would help... otherwise just gen a few hundred years before leaving the HW (so as not to deplete non-HW minerals.) Once you've colonised the universe, you can export the hab data to a spreadsheet that will advise which worlds need how much facs and mines.
[Updated on: Thu, 03 August 2006 04:34] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Thu, 03 August 2006 04:57 |
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Getting max tech isn't so hard, I just use a hacked exec (i've got one) where everything costs no tech. It works for getting max terrforming.
That all sounds like a lot of work, why not just deploy to as many worlds and let the habitation % do the rest? They'll all max out at some level over X many centures. The last thing I'd need to do is build a huge fleet of super freighters to lift off all the people.
Though I can see what your saying about people trying to match habs. Course I could use HE as the main race, and just switch to the others for building purposes. That way I can spread out very quickly. If I stick with the 20% growth. I'll get 40% growth, which makes for very easy colonizing. I'll be spewing people out of my ears. I dunno... I just want to find the simplest way to randomize a map. I recognize I'm not going to get out of having to seed the map which will take a while. But a no immune HE might be able to pull it off. An HE with IT stargates. 
I'm going to have to do some testing to see what works out best for the host race.
[Updated on: Thu, 03 August 2006 04:57]
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Thu, 03 August 2006 07:09 |
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 iztok |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1207
Registered: April 2003
Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
| Captain Maim wrote on Thu, 03 August 2006 10:57 |
That all sounds like a lot of work, why not just deploy to as many worlds and let the habitation % do the rest?
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Why don't you use a 3-immune HE 7% and settle everything, with default queue 3 fac's / 3 mines. After sending out mini-colonizer to every planet you gen 40 turns and check planets. The earliest should have about 60 factories, 70 mines and 180k pop. On most hab-centered you'd now clear the queue, and gen another 10 turns. Then you'd clear the queue on less centered, gen again 10 turns and clear all queues. This should give on "worst-hab" planets about 120 fac's and 130 mines and 1100-2000kt of each mineral on surface. Now you put in every queue a dock and after that enough LFs to lift (and kill by deleting the design) all pop and unwanted minerals. Before that you'd OFC build all the gadgets.
Simple, but work-intense task. Automating build-queue setup with some keyboard-input simulation program would save a lot of it.
My 
BR, Iztok
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Thu, 03 August 2006 09:02 |
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| Micha | 
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Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002
Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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I think you need to go 3i for the host race, all planets habs will stay random as a normal start.
Further, let's say for example med/packed with 10 players (+1 host race), that's 540 planets. Now sent even amounts of pop to each player HW, there you make 53 equal colonizer fleets (540 minus number of HWs, ok, you've one too many <g>).
Then in the first year you sent out 10 fleets per HW to 10 worlds near at random, set default queues to something like Iztok suggested. Gen 40-50 years, pick another 10 random worlds around the players HWs and set to colonize, again 40-50 etc till you run out of colonizers. 40-50 years after the last colonizer you empty all queues.
This way you can distribute the pre-industralized worlds evenly per player and end up with several different layers of industrialization (the years between the colonizer waves, but also the random distance travelled from the HW).
After that fase, build a base and start making your Easter Eggs, upload pop, minerals if you like etc ...
mch
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Thu, 03 August 2006 15:30 |
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Now that, is an idea I can go with. Seeding 10 worlds at a time.
Though, technically, I don't need to even tech up the host race. I just gen the game using a modified i patch, and then I build whatever I want. Hand it to a player and hand it back, then delete the designs on the player.
I like the idea of multiple habs... heh, What if I morphed into a PP and just shot packets all over the place? That'd constitute a random terraforming action. Even with Tri-Immune.
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Fri, 04 August 2006 04:31 |
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| tgellan wrote on Fri, 04 August 2006 17:44 |
As I understood from reading about PP, that PP terraforming only works on colonized planets, and that the package must be of a certain size (+-500kt per 1% chance). I don't think you'll have the requested minerals for all these packages, unless your tool allows to adjust for minerals too...
Could someone confirm that unused buildings on a planet get destroyed after 10years?
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There is a thread in the PP forum that details terraforming (it bears little relation to the manual...)
I don't think installations are destroyed after 10 years... But why don't you test it? It wouldn't take you long...
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Fri, 04 August 2006 04:33 |
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It most certainly works on uninhabited, AND inhabited planets.
They can permiform or just plane terraform, but the former takes about 1200kt per 1% change, also the type of ore used affects which hab is changed. I'm not sure but I think about 350kt per terraform % change. Don't quote me on that last one I forget exactly, But I seem to recall something about 2 packets yeilding a 50% chance of changing 1%. So, maybe it's only 280kt (4 packets.) Look it up.
Try the PP section on the main forum page. That'll give you all the info you need.
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Fri, 04 August 2006 04:57 |
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Awe Nuts. He's right, but it's not instant, it's gradual decay. Well, outside of the easter eggs and mine fields and stargate network.. My big hope was to have a game with lots of industrialized world. But at least they don't decay too fast... Shame. I was so egar to try a game with a metamorphic host race.
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Fri, 04 August 2006 06:03 |
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| Micha |
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Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002
Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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| Captain Maim wrote on Thu, 03 August 2006 21:30 |
Now that, is an idea I can go with. Seeding 10 worlds at a time.
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10 *per player*.  But that was just a suggestion, you could either go for 5 or 20, or whatever ... It just gives some variation in numbers of installations. With 10 per turn you would have 5 colonizations waves (53 per HW total), more than enough I would say ...
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Though, technically, I don't need to even tech up the host race. I just gen the game using a modified i patch, and then I build whatever I want. Hand it to a player and hand it back, then delete the designs on the player.
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Note that i and j do not mix. Once you go to j you can't go back. So during the setup you need to make sure not to switch. BTW you can just used StarEd to make a zero tech/cost jRC3 version ... (I might still have something like that laying around) All items at zero tech and also at zero cost.
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I like the idea of multiple habs... heh, What if I morphed into a PP and just shot packets all over the place? That'd constitute a random terraforming action. Even with Tri-Immune.
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I don't understand what you want to do with habs, first of all any so advanced race would be living anywhere, so a 3i ... Next to that any tempering with habs will benefit some races and cause some unbalance. With distributing the industralization like I suggested and leaving habs alone the randomness and luck would be the same as for any other Stars! game ...
mch
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Fri, 04 August 2006 10:35 |
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| tgellan |
 | Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 75
Registered: May 2006
Location: Luxembourg | |
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| Dogthinkers wrote on Fri, 04 August 2006 10:31 |
I don't think installations are destroyed after 10 years... But why don't you test it? It wouldn't take you long...
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I would have, but can't do it at work, nor do I have currently a j-patch installed... I used to play as my CD came back in '96, meaning 2.7b  therefor I asked for someone else testing it. Besides, I recently got it to i-patch, and as I learned from another post, it's possible to have many different versions installed on same PC, I'll get a j-patch soon enough
| Captain Maim wrote on Fri, 04 August 2006 10:57 |
Awe Nuts. He's right, but it's not instant, it's gradual decay. Well, outside of the easter eggs and mine fields and stargate network.. My big hope was to have a game with lots of industrialized world. But at least they don't decay too fast... Shame. I was so egar to try a game with a metamorphic host race.
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Which patch do you refer to?
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Mon, 07 August 2006 04:14 |
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| tgellan |
| Chief Petty Officer |
Messages: 75
Registered: May 2006
Location: Luxembourg | |
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| Captain Maim wrote on Fri, 04 August 2006 23:11 |
Whoops! I tried it again, I uh... Yeah, I'm mistaken, I probably forgot the number I was looking for... Well... This is embarassing.  I think last time I was looking at the wrong number. 1200 of 1100 or something like that. Sorry. False alarm.
Guess that means my game idea will work! WOOT! 
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Yet another error in the manual 
| Captain Maim wrote on Fri, 04 August 2006 23:11 |
I think I'll have two host races... That way the easter eggs will be non hostile, while the nebula will hurt.
What options should I include in this game?
-Multi PRT Easter Egg ships
-Minefield Nebulae
-Limitied stargate network. (with spesific or random gates.)
-And either how many or what precent of the map should be preindustrialized?
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Though the tec level of the easter eggs could severly affect the outcome of the game early on, they will be of no benefit at all as soon as they become common technology and ship slots start filling up. Therefor I'd setup the gatenetwork at or nearby the location of the eastern eggs. In that way you may upgrade the eastern eggs as the game advances... Or as an alternative, do build the eggs at the planets they orbit...
For the Nebulae, I guess they will be SD as they will probably be dangerous at any speed, and you'll have to restock them back to maximum size... Maybe you should consider cloaking the minelayers to 98%? I'd go for somethink like a Nubian Minelayer with lots of armor and cloaks do resist to the minefield detonations... Could be built by a SS, then switch PRT to SD for detonations, or somethink similar...
Just my 5cents
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| Re: New game suggestion: The Precursors |
Mon, 07 August 2006 04:46 |
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| tgellan wrote on Mon, 07 August 2006 01:14 |
Though the tec level of the easter eggs could severly affect the outcome of the game early on, they will be of no benefit at all as soon as they become common technology and ship slots start filling up.
Therefor I'd setup the gatenetwork at or nearby the location of the eastern eggs. In that way you may upgrade the eastern eggs as the game advances... Or as an alternative, do build the eggs at the planets they orbit...
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What did you mean by "build the eggs at the planets they orbit? You say that like I have a choice, of course they'll be built in orbit around planets. Now if you meant the immediate vicinity of the planet that's more reasonable.
As for the tech, I'll probably just make it so that the lighter tech things have less cloaking, the eggs will all be cloaked to some extent, else they wouldn't be easter eggs. The really good stuff (as well as minelayers) will be 98% cloaked. I'll probably make some lighter easter eggs with TD's on them so you can hunt down bigger game. Like a nubian with nothing but TD's on it. That way they have to supply their own scanning power and it just enhances it. I'll probably cloak stuff no less than 75% or 80%. Or some other value that's more appropreate. If all else failes, just give the eggs a loop and so they're always on the move until caught.
| Quote: |
For the Nebulae, I guess they will be SD as they will probably be dangerous at any speed, and you'll have to restock them back to maximum size... Maybe you should consider cloaking the minelayers to 98%? I'd go for somethink like a Nubian Minelayer with lots of armor and cloaks do resist to the minefield detonations... Could be built by a SS, then switch PRT to SD for detonations, or somethink similar...
Just my 5cents
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98% cloaked mine layers are simply a must, and I'm using the SD super minelayers. And I'll use mutliples to mask their locations.
If I use an SD to manage that then I can just have the mine layers roaming about on a loop, that'd make detection much harder. Course they're basically off limits for killing since they're geography not enemy.
I was thinking that the gate network should have random gates on it. THough that might be kinda mean.... But it would also mean that they aren't instantly understood. Which seems a good thing.
I could also build gates on really mineral poor worlds, that way no one will have any particular cause to try and take the planet, even though they shouldn't attack them anyway.
Jumpgate ships are something I don't think get old. A small fleet of 5 or so would be enormously valuble to any non-IT race. Other MT toys will be scattered about on the eggs. Or at least on some of them but that's just an idea.
{Mod edit: fixed quote}
[Updated on: Mon, 07 August 2006 07:56] by Moderator
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