New DLC

[zolobolo]

I assume the poblisher doesnt finance additional DLCs (the one that came out was around 6 monhts after release and this threat itself is almost 2 years old now)

Did you consider raising a kickstarter project instead for all of your DLC ideas as a sort of SiS v2 Expansion?
- There seem to be a constant influx of new players at least based on Steam page reviews and maybe even the existing player base might be enough + if these are happy with the game already they can punch higher then the market value of the DLC and if the expansion turns out to be great it can bring in even more new players to the base game as well
- All the items in the bucket list could be listed and those that havent been started yet could be stretch goals as well as new backgrounds, ship patterns , end game crisis, or leader faces to distinguish same race when found several times on the same map
- Progress made so far on upcoming DLC could be used as promo-materiel for the project as guaranteed deliverable

[Arioch]

We have what we need to continue work on the DLC. It's just a matter of having free time and free energy, since we both have other jobs.

Our plan is that when we're getting near to completion and we have a good idea of when it will be finished, we'll go to the publisher and work out everything else that needs to be worked out. If we were go to the publisher now, we would have to set a deadline that we'll almost certainly miss, and neither Sven nor I really needs that kind of stress. I don't think our contract with the publisher would allow us to do separate crowdfunding, but it doesn't really matter at this stage because money is not the primary issue.

I know it's hard to wait, but this is the reality of our current situation. But progress is being made.

[zolobolo]

We have what we need to continue work on the DLC. It's just a matter of having free time and free energy, since we both have other jobs.

Yes this would of course only work if you were contractors with some expected downtime or self-employed as far as coding work I imagine that artists usually work on project basis

Yes it has been a while hasnt it Just took a peek on my Stema horus for SiS and it now clocks in az 1270h
Second on the ranking is Gladius with 354h and third is Witcher 3 with 223h

I'd say that SiS is still the best singple palyer 4x on the market: there are now Twilight Imperium 4th edition + Eclipse Second Dawn for multiplayer fun and evne though these are boardgames the visual on these releases does not trail behind video games anymore

I wish for more DLCs to SiS not because of the new features (spying, culture, persistent fleets etc..) but mainly to be able to populate larger galaxies. I am always palying with all factions and Huge galaxy mostly with +20% star systems on top of it but the amount of races usually means that the galaxy is "explored" by mid game and two powerblocks form. I hope that by populating it with more factions, there will be more unknown factors, power lines and scale to the game to make it an epic like Stellaris and GalCiv promised to be (and in my opinion didnt deliver)

Been following the many improvements and fixes to the release version and they have resolved numerous balance issues and made the overall game a more solid experience (graphs, victory screen) - I havent seen an actual error for years now. There are still some things in the base game that need rebalance of fixinf sicne release and legacies introduced new items that need the same (asteroid base, forge and space habitat) I feel that since each new faction introduces a host of new items it would need a lot of care to balance those - guess this is where the publisher could be helpful for the final run then once the art and code is in place

Hope you will find the time to put the DLC(s) together - just let me know if I am holding you back with the posts and will stop spamming the forum with balance issues

[zolobolo]

Any news on how work is going behind the scenes on new updates?

We're making progress. Sven coded up the first pass on the new terraforming system, and we're currently doing internal testing on it.

The menu seems promising: is it for selecting the track on which the planet should be terraformed or is it only for overview of the progression?

The max pop measure seems to decrease with subesuent stages I assume this will be the other way around?

I love the idea of introducing "extreme" level for planets as a final stage for fertility as it and thus provide a unique benefit to terraforming that is not attainable by just bumbing into random planets

Did you decide if there is going to be terraforming infrastructure and if it will be permanent?

I think it would be a great opportunity to sneak in some more options to buildings but it is important to make it usefull afterwards so the player does not go around scrapping solar panels and terraforming towers on large maps.
One way to achieve this cold be for these buildings to be permanent thus scraping being disabled but that would not be elegant
Giving them some base benefit such as food production might help (food is always good) or coin production to solar panels - thus the player does not feel they need to scarp these or loose valauble building slots otherwise

[zolobolo]

The new DLC focuses on expanding the terraforming mechanic, and the new faction has special terraforming abilities.

I would like to include the ecological damage model in the updated terraforming mechanics, but we'll see how it works out.

Attached are some concept images related to the new DLC.

gardeners designs II 7 pretty.jpg

Dont know if I have mentioned this already but the sandy color seems more fitting - the less colors the ships operate the better to give them a clear color pattern that matches their style

In case of Gardener ships I imagine a rugged pattern (like cittin plates with cracks and generally uneven surfaces that imply growth instead of manufacturing) and earhty colors might fit well - less blinking lights and bright colors (except if the bright color used represents the faction territory on the galaxy map like purple)

Are those details on the side planned to be moving around like in case of Harpies?

[Arioch]

The menu seems promising: is it for selecting the track on which the planet should be terraformed or is it only for overview of the progression?

It's for both. Though you can see progression on the normal planet screen.

ss_terraforming_wip1.jpg (395.34 KiB) Viewed 26034 times

The max pop measure seems to decrease with subesuent stages I assume this will be the other way around?

That version is showing all possible transformations. Not all transformations make the world more habitable for a given species; some will make it less habitable. We're not sure whether we will bother showing adverse transformations. In either case, you will normally see only those transformations that are available with your completed technologies.

ss_terraforming_wip2.jpg (357.53 KiB) Viewed 26034 times

Keep in mind that these screens are a work in progress.

I love the idea of introducing "extreme" level for planets as a final stage for fertility as it and thus provide a unique benefit to terraforming that is not attainable by just bumbing into random planets

Habitability is being expanded so that it has a wider range of possible values.

Did you decide if there is going to be terraforming infrastructure and if it will be permanent?

Yes, there is a Terraforming Station building (these have the green "mine" icons as placeholders) and several kinds of satellites. Whether they will need to be kept after a transformation is finished is still something that it being worked out; it will probably depend on the transformation. (For example, if you created an artificial sun to warm the planet, you'll need to keep it.)

The terraforming options are spread out across the length of the tech tree, so you'll need to decide whether you want to keep your terraforming infrastructure in place, or scrap it and rebuild it again every time you research a new transformation.

Are those details on the side planned to be moving around like in case of Harpies?

Not sure which details you mean, but there will be some animated elements. The heavy beam weapons have opening gunports similar to the Orthin.

[zolobolo]

Habitability is being expanded so that it has a wider range of possible values.

Sounds good but you will keep non home planets on high fertility maximum right?
This was extreeme fertility can be resrved for home system of Gardeners and those who reach it wia terraofrmation

Yes, there is a Terraforming Station building (these have the green "mine" icons as placeholders) and several kinds of satellites. Whether they will need to be kept after a transformation is finished is still something that it being worked out; it will probably depend on the transformation. (For example, if you created an artificial sun to warm the planet, you'll need to keep it.)

The terraforming options are spread out across the length of the tech tree, so you'll need to decide whether you want to keep your terraforming infrastructure in place, or scrap it and rebuild it again every time you research a new transformation.

Propose the satellites to take up orbital space - the more decision there are the better and having more items take up the same limited amount of space should make for intersting decisions (protection of worlds that are actviely being terraformed would be more difficult)

I seem to recall that Gardeners will have terraformation (shovel) output while other main races will not - I thini its a good approach to make them very unique but also propose there is a new minor race that also provides shovel output to spread the function a bit around and have at least two races with that output in various amounts (the Gardeners could have higher output as the minor race so that they are sitll very valauble slaves, or additional race to have in your empire while the monor faction should do it if you dont have access to Gardener pops)

And of yourse - enslaved Gardenres should retain shover output so they can fulfil this core function even enslaved
Though maybe not harmonised... I guess they should be able to provide shovel output even then...

Not sure which details you mean, but there will be some animated elements. The heavy beam weapons have opening gunports similar to the Orthin.

The tenticle like protrutions on the back of the ships - its ok if these ships dont move that much as I woudl iamgine they are more hard-shelled then harpies and to mbe moving much. Opening gunports are cool of course, and the strange engine effect at the back of the cruisers would be neat if its swirling a bit

[Arioch]

In the current live game, there are a few useful Planetology techs that increase the habitability of planets by 1, but the transformation techs are all at the very end of the tree, and so don't really come into play in a normal game... terraforming is sort of a toy for the endgame, but once you get there it's very cheap and easy to transform all of your planets into the optimal type for your race. The idea of this update is to break up the terraforming transformations into multiple stages that are each more expensive so that transforming a planet takes much longer, but to also make the basic ones available much earlier in the tree so that the earliest stages of terraforming can replace the +1 habitability techs. But the idea is to make the cost and investment of infrastructure high enough that it will have a significant opportunity cost to research the techs, build the infrastructure, and boost the process through projects. So except for the Gardeners, whose gameplay is centered around terraforming, terraforming will probably be limited to a few key Arid or Glacier worlds with special resources that you want to boost into major production centers, or if you get a map start with very few habitable planets, or if you just really dig terraforming. Most of the advanced transformation techs are at the end of the tree, so transforming a Barren to a Garden world will be something that happens slowly over the course of the entire game. It will no longer be a trivial matter to fill every orbital slot of every star with a Paradise world in just a few turns.

The other goal of the new system is to make the transformation stages visually distinct and progressive from the starting state through to the end state, so that you don't have the jarring snap from one planet type to a completely different planet. This presents a problem for homeworlds, as creating staged graphical transitions would explode the number of required art assets. However, except for the Yoral's Verrold, all the homeworlds are already ideal for their faction's race, so there shouldn't be any need to terraform the homeworld. Paradise world transformations require the Ecopoeisis tech, which will be difficult to get and may not be available in every playthrough. (We may need a special case for Verrold, but it's very similar to the stock Glacier world, so custom graphics may not be a problem. It'll be fun to go back to early versions of the Verrold graphic and de-ice it, and I don't think it will be a terrible thing if all terraformed Glacier planets end up looking very similar to the ice-free version of Verrold.)

Terraforming buildings and stations have all the properties of normal buildings and stations -- they occupy a slot for their type and can be destroyed or scrapped. Colonists that have shovel yields will continue to provide those yields as long as they are content, just like any other colonist yields. Shovels have different types (Heating, Cooling, Atmosphere, Supercoral, Ecopoiesis), and there may a number of different population types that yield different shovel types.

The projections at the rear of the Gardeners ships are related to the drive system (similar to the ships of other factions); they do not move.

[Arioch]

The original continent map of Verrold:

planet texture yoral homeworld to garden1.jpg (249.08 KiB) Viewed 26011 times

[nweismuller]

I guess the main thing you need is to make sure that Tendao has a good progression to a Coral world, and that other non-Bacabs homeworlds have good progressions to Paradise/Hive worlds. Which should be... a little more manageable than making all possible terraforming progressions for them. (It continues to boggle my mind that under current rules, you can't terraform Tendao to Coral, but hopefully the terraforming update fixes this... at least once Coral terraforming is even possible.)

[Arioch]

Both Coral and Paradise transformations will be special cases, and not just regular destinations on the default tech tree. And the effects will not necessarily be the same as they are now.

While it might not be a huge deal to do special versions of the homeworlds as they could probably be handled mostly through color shifts, there are gameplay and lore issues. For one, they won't necessarily be "best" for you anymore depending on your biome requirements. For another, the Coral world is created using the Gardeners' supercoral, which creates an ecosystem which may or may not be good for your species.

I mean, it's one thing to transform a lifeless colony world, but it's another thing to completely destroy the natural ecosystems of your native planet just because you want a higher maximum population for your species. At the very least, there would be trade-offs; for example, transforming Tendao into a Coral world might destroy your Opil special. We'll see how things work out.

[zolobolo]

In the current live game, there are a few useful Planetology techs that increase the habitability of planets by 1, but the transformation techs are all at the very end of the tree, and so don't really come into play in a normal game... terraforming is sort of a toy for the endgame, but once you get there it's very cheap and easy to transform all of your planets into the optimal type for your race. The idea of this update is to break up the terraforming transformations into multiple stages that are each more expensive so that transforming a planet takes much longer, but to also make the basic ones available much earlier in the tree so that the earliest stages of terraforming can replace the +1 habitability techs. But the idea is to make the cost and investment of infrastructure high enough that it will have a significant opportunity cost to research the techs, build the infrastructure, and boost the process through projects. So except for the Gardeners, whose gameplay is centered around terraforming, terraforming will probably be limited to a few key Arid or Glacier worlds with special resources that you want to boost into major production centers, or if you get a map start with very few habitable planets, or if you just really dig terraforming. Most of the advanced transformation techs are at the end of the tree, so transforming a Barren to a Garden world will be something that happens slowly over the course of the entire game. It will no longer be a trivial matter to fill every orbital slot of every star with a Paradise world in just a few turns.

The other goal of the new system is to make the transformation stages visually distinct and progressive from the starting state through to the end state, so that you don't have the jarring snap from one planet type to a completely different planet. This presents a problem for homeworlds, as creating staged graphical transitions would explode the number of required art assets. However, except for the Yoral's Verrold, all the homeworlds are already ideal for their faction's race, so there shouldn't be any need to terraform the homeworld. Paradise world transformations require the Ecopoeisis tech, which will be difficult to get and may not be available in every playthrough. (We may need a special case for Verrold, but it's very similar to the stock Glacier world, so custom graphics may not be a problem. It'll be fun to go back to early versions of the Verrold graphic and de-ice it, and I don't think it will be a terrible thing if all terraformed Glacier planets end up looking very similar to the ice-free version of Verrold.)

Terraforming buildings and stations have all the properties of normal buildings and stations -- they occupy a slot for their type and can be destroyed or scrapped. Colonists that have shovel yields will continue to provide those yields as long as they are content, just like any other colonist yields. Shovels have different types (Heating, Cooling, Atmosphere, Supercoral, Ecopoiesis), and there may a number of different population types that yield different shovel types.

The projections at the rear of the Gardeners ships are related to the drive system (similar to the ships of other factions); they do not move.

Sounds excellent

I am mostly worried if this mechanic with all the effort needed to implement it will be interesting enough for players to engage with (looking at asteroid base and living quarter) and not annoying

Thus the benefits need to be signifficant, but not too huge to fource the player to micro it everywhere while being avaialble right from the start and spread out through the tech tree as stated
I imagine this mechanic being best for two occasions:
1. Barely habitable planets (for the main faction)
2. Not habitable planets (dont know if terraforming could be started though on un-colonised planets - it would make sense if you cna deplyo a soalr panel li a station for example on top of them)

Consquently home planets, garden worlds and other planets that are high-value right from the start for your race should not be a valuable terraformation target or be a target at all
If it is already the case for all races except Yoral then removing any planet bonus during terraofmr would be a logical choice to deterr from this move

The gameplay loop would look something like this:
1. Player looks for planets to colonise and sees valuable targets to colonise right away
2. Also sees planets that can be turned high value by terraformation (home planet not being one of these for lore and logical reasons . I mean they have evolved there but is also needeed as production base for expansion and it would only be bothersome to have the option of terraforming lingering around on the UI for such planets when the player will nto engage with it anyhow). The low-level planet usualyl found in a factiosn home system should provide a medium value target for terraform right from the beginning but should also not be the most tempting target (restricted by size)
3. Once initial few colonies have been established and the empire has a stable economy going on (usually at around turn 50), they select the most promising or best lcoated planets to start terraforming them
4. Terraformation should take a lot of resources (infrastructure), reasonable time (min 6 but not longer then 20 turns in early game) and block the blanet from being used for anythign else - this already seems to be the case by the process occupying the build order slot
5. Once terraformation is complete the increased fertility and habitability provides the bonuses
- Terraforming infra should either be euto-destroyed or be useful for something else. Tearing down manually I would not recommend. Maybe if they are torn down the planet deterriorates back to previous state?
- Planet should be clearly marked as terraformed to prevent these planets from blending in with others. Low value planets are visualyl not that engaging (usually) but they do provide variety on system level and terraformaing might run the danger of evening out these visual differences and making systems look too homegeneous - keeping terraforming infra round might help in this as well as they could serve as visual queues to the fact hat a planet has been terraformed

I do not recommend splitting up shovels into different types on main UI level (Heating, Cooling, Atmosphere, Supercoral, Ecopoiesis)
Like in the above example I assume and hope that they are aggregated into a simple shovel metric on planet MGMT screen to hide the details from the player. Just like in case of other yields it can be properly broken down when selecting the yield icon:
"This planet iss producing:
+4 Shovels from Terrofarmtower
+9 Shovels from 6 Gardener pops yielding 1.5: 6*1.5=9
+10 Shovels from Solar panel"
In such a case each infra including stationsneed to communicate what their yield will be if built which varries of coruse with tech and planet

It would also be best to clearly present the terraform option for each valid planet (home planets should not be valid) to shorten the evaluation phase for the player
e.g.:
This planet can be terraformed into planet types:
x Increase max pop by +2; Remove special resource: Gold - Supported by Infra "a" tech: "A"
->y Increase max pop by +4; Increase Fertility to High - Supported by Infra "b" Tech "B"
->z Increase max pop by +8; Increase Fertility to Extreme - Supported by Infra "c" Tech "C"
Since pops can ahve shovel output as well, infra and tech are not hard criteria (like in other games) but only methods of accelerating the process

The issue might be that tech is a pre-req for infra which is a pre-req for target planet type - so covneying this chain in a single tooltip is tricky

Removing special resources would also be great as low-value planets with special resources might still be considered best left as is (not all planets should be a clearly benefitial one to terraform)

[zolobolo]

The original continent map of Verrold:

planet texture yoral homeworld to garden1.jpg

This is so neat - There is clearly a lot of effort that went into designing the planets and it shows

What is late-tech allows for unique terraform options that might also affect Yoral homewrold - isntead of wiping away ists "unkique-ness" it might make it something else
Its probably best to leave home-planets alone with this mechanic altogehter but if they are effected they should not be turned into another generci planet for sure due to the above (visual differentiation, lore, logical reasons)

[PrivateHudson]

I'd completely forbid to terraform homeworlds (or even all non-standard planets) to simplify things.

[zolobolo]

I'd completely forbid to terraform homeworlds (or even all non-standard planets) to simplify things.

Yes am all for it: hints are needed for the planets on how tehy can be terraformed but these would be just be botherwsome to have on homeworlds
They should instead say something along the liens of: this planets biom is ideally suited for our people