Hive Worlds

[nweismuller]

While the new terraforming system is being worked on, I have to muse a bit about hive worlds as currently implemented. Hive worlds are... surprisingly limited in the actual increase in population capacity they offer, while maintaining a high fertility. Now, having hive worlds that actually were far and away the densest possible worlds would, as things stand, be a problem, considering that Ashdar Prime and a few randomly generated worlds (including the Scavenger homeworld) are Hives. The high fertility is odd, given the ecological devastation supposed to be wrought by supporting the hive cities. There could be a *potential* solution to both these issues, if we take all hives that exist at game start as 'ruined' hives, basically being arid worlds with the ruins of old hive cities that can only be restored to a limited fashion. We can assume a local biosphere was left behind from the limited biological samples actually resident in the cities themselves. If 'true' hives were limited to the very late game, with Ashdar Prime only to be restored to having fully-functional hive cities when the technology is redeveloped to create them- and, in the process, devastating the biosphere outside the city walls- perhaps hive worlds would be more satisfyingly implemented.

All this said, I still love this game and its general approach to planetary environments and biomes- it's probably the best approach I've seen in a space 4X.

[Arioch]

Hive worlds were originally low fertility, but we found this was too punishing for the Ashdar Imperials, who start on one.

Hive worlds will be completely changed with the terraforming revamp, as will the fertility attribute. The chief change in the system is that terraforming transitions are staged rather than an instant switch between planet types, so there will be more variability.

[nweismuller]

To be clear, I'm not proposing altering anything about Ashdar Prime or other hive worlds spawned onto the map. I'm suggesting that hives as they currently exist be 'ruined' hives, with high fertility and (relatively) low population caps, which might eventually, with very late game technology, be converted into 'true' hives, with the highest overall population caps in the game, but low fertility. I understand the reasoning behind not wanting to cripple the Ashdar Empire in its rise once again to the stars.

[gaerzi]

I'm (very slowly) working on a mod (that will probably have to be redone from scratch after the terraforming update) which attempts to put planet types into "tiers", like Master of Orion does with its "biome classes".

The basic idea is that each planet has a number of habitat units equal to 3+tier.
Barren and Inferno are Tier 1, so they have a total of 4 biome units (which are, respectively, 4 airless and 4 inferno).
Arid, Desert, Glacier, and Steppes are Tier 2, so they get 5. Arid has 1 ice and 4 arid, Desert has 5 arid, Glacier has 1 vent and 4 ice, Steppes has 3 ice and 2 arid.
Ocean and Swamp make up Tier 3, with 6 units. Ocean has 1 ice, 1 vent, 4 ocean; Swamp has 2 ocean, 3 swamp, and 1 forest.
Garden, Iceball, and Island are Tier 4, with 7 units. Iceball has 4 airless and 3 vents, Islands has 3 ocean, 1 vents, 2 reefs and 1 ice; Garden has 1 vents, 2 ocean, 1 reef, 1 ice, and 2 forest.
Finally, Coral, Hive, and Paradise are Tier 5 with a total of 8 units. Coral has 1 vents, 3 ocean, and 4 reefs. Hive has 5 arid and 3 metro. Paradise has 1 vents, 4 reefs, and 3 forest.

Of course, all biomes are not alike. Airless and Inferno have a max density of 2.8 (with Wrem and Tarib respectively), ice maxes out at 2.25 (with Algorian and Yoral), arid and ocean at 3 (Spice Monger or Tinker, and Phidi or Thresher, respectively), while reef, swamp, forest, and metro all max out at 4 (swamp with Gremak, vents with Orthin, reef with Phidi and Thresher, forest and metro with most land species). Tweaking these values is the next step.