My Reaction / Consider These Ideas

[jdmillard]

Back to my list. Here are some more points:

25. In the early game, it is extremely predictable whether or not someone agrees to trade maps. If I've done some exploring, they always agree. If I've neglected to explore then they disagree. Since detecting the pattern, I've been able to predict their answer 100% of the time (with the exception of factions who hate me and will disagree to everything anyways). But in the case of neutral factions, it's like they somehow know what you've discovered before you give them your maps. It's like they know if its a good deal or not before making the call. The AI should move to Vegas, not Pandora. This isn't that big of a problem, but I had to mention it. I just don't imagine that human opponents would behave that way.

26. Why are the money amounts for diplomatic deals (gifts, tribute, ect) always set percentages of your balance? This is extremely annoying when you have a lot of money. If I'm saving up so that I can upgrade my units when new tech is on its way, I'll typically have a high balance for a while. I'll even put some of my production towards wealth. If I want to start a trade or research pact and the AI requires payment, they want thousands of credits when they would have clearly been happy with a lower amount. If I wait a few turns and upgrade my units, suddenly they're happy with 150 credits. I just work around this by striking my deals right after I spend all my money on production and upgrades. Besides upgrading and production, what's the point of saving up to have a lot of money if it's just as persuasive as a little bit of money? I just think that the simple-balance-percentage system is a little too simple... and annoying. I'm okay if your balance influences the values, not decides them.

27. I should be able to do an orbital bombardment in my own territories. Some might argue that this is unrealistic; just leave the targeted hex with -X morale for Y turns. If you do two bombardments in the same hex, make it -2X morale for Y turns OR -X morale for 2Y turns.

Or was there some unknown reason that I couldn't do an orbital bombardment in my territory in my last game?

[Strategia]

25. In the early game, it is extremely predictable whether or not someone agrees to trade maps. If I've done some exploring, they always agree. If I've neglected to explore then they disagree. Since detecting the pattern, I've been able to predict their answer 100% of the time (with the exception of factions who hate me and will disagree to everything anyways). But in the case of neutral factions, it's like they somehow know what you've discovered before you give them your maps. It's like they know if its a good deal or not before making the call. The AI should move to Vegas, not Pandora. This isn't that big of a problem, but I had to mention it. I just don't imagine that human opponents would behave that way.

The AI does this in any game where you can trade maps. I guess it's due to the fact that humans can take many factors into account when proposing a trade, whereas AIs can only follow their programming. A human can make an educated guess as to whether or not the deal would be worth it (depending on how many scouts they've seen, tech levels, location, etc.), while such esoteric factors are next to impossible for an AI to take into account. Then you run into the problem of over- and under-valuing map trades; if the AI is eager to trade maps, it'd be all too easy to milk them dry that way, and AIs who won't trade maps ever is just undesirable. Having the AI know whether or not you've explored a lot is somewhat unrealistic, and can be annoying (especially if they constantly harass you for your maps), but at least they can put a real value on map trades, and you can actually turn some minor profit this way. It's unfortunate, but it's the best we can do until someone figures out how to let an AI make abstract, esoteric estimations.

27. I should be able to do an orbital bombardment in my own territories. Some might argue that this is unrealistic; just leave the targeted hex with -X morale for Y turns. If you do two bombardments in the same hex, make it -2X morale for Y turns OR -X morale for 2Y turns.

Or was there some unknown reason that I couldn't do an orbital bombardment in my territory in my last game?

This has bugged me too. Sure, you don't exactly want to drop a nuke on your own cities (unless that could quell a major revolt?), but surely you should be able to bombard your own territories, especially once they've expanded beyond your cities' working range. All that extra land is essentially wasted if you don't have cities there (and good luck with that if it's, you know, an ocean), and having that early warning line-of-sight on approaching enemies is not that useful if you can't drop flaming doom on them from above. I had one game where I owned a small continent by myself, and I had orbital bombardment centres in most cities. I was in a prolonged low-intensity war with Imperium - they'd keep sending small numbers of troops to dash against my defences - and since my military was fairly small and almost entirely defensive, I'd made it a habit of using orbital bombardment (and the occasional nuke) as my primary active defence. But my borders kept expanding, and pretty soon they were so far out that I saw fewer and fewer transports in neutral waters, and I had to watch as they made their way to my cities over open water and empty territory within my terrain while I was unable to attack them with my orbital bombardments. It was confusing, annoying, and actually quite dangerous, as I'd basically lost my first line of defence, and I skipped over the tech that gives you that equipment for +1 sight so if I wanted to deploy spotters, they'd be at much greater risk from enemy attack. Granted, I did also have satellite scans available - but those take 3 turns to recharge, and covering the most likely approach paths with satellite scans every turn is just tedious. If I'd been able to keep using bombardments on my own lands, however, I wouldn't have to deal with all that. One of the great advantages (if not the greatest) of borders spreading beyond city working limits is free extended line-of-sight, but if you're unable to use that line-of-sight, then there's really no point to it.

Long story short, if I want to bomb/nuke my own territory, I should be able to. Hell, even cities, perhaps, if only for scorched-earth purposes.

[dfinnigan]

I hope I am not missing something but I found some of the research technologies to be non-sensical. It is my understanding that the factions who are on Pandora got there by using an interstellar starship to travel that distance and arrived safely on the planet and have not suffered any other mishap. Therefore, I am wondering why they need to research technologies such as Naval Transportaion, Rigorous Regiment, Field Training, Guided Weapons, Reinforced Steel Plates, etc... Does the research mean that they do not have this technology or does it represent that they do have it but first must build the infrastructure, training and resources to implement it. For example, perhaps Naval Transportation represents builing shipyards, modifying designs for an alien environment and training sailors, etc... If this is the case maybe we should designates some research as projects which are to implement already known research and others are basic research into currently unknown technology. I did like the operations part of developing a technology such as Satellite Uplink and Field Training.

Dave

[dalves]

From the description of the technologies, I understood that they need to adapt their technology to Pandora. They know how to build a boat, for example, but they don't know how to build good transports for massive use on Pandora.

[Strategia]

From the description of the technologies, I understood that they need to adapt their technology to Pandora. They know how to build a boat, for example, but they don't know how to build good transports for massive use on Pandora.

This. Pandora is inhabitable, but it's still different enough to present unexpected design challenges. The manual description for the Seeker ATV outright states that they even have to contend with varying gravity, IIRC, so while they surely have access to two centuries of motor vehicle design on Earth, they can't just break out the Humvees and go out exploring. Similarly with the oceans; even slight changes in e.g. acidity or salinity can mean that Earth ships are just not viable on Pandora, and they have to expend time and effort overcoming these problems. (Not to mention issuing giant inflatable metal transport ships to everyone )

Also, I never got my name in the beta credits Oh well, should've gotten around to it sooner.

[jdmillard]

Also, if Pandora is a younger planet, there wouldn't be fossil fuels. This poses a challenge for all vehicles. It would take some time to develop and mass market a new type of bio fuel or batteries that are strong enough. Even if there were fossil fuels, the biology and planet crust are different from Earth's and would suggest that refining it to a combustible form would take some research.

I'm an aerospace engineer and I gotta say that if the atmosphere was different (which it undoubtedly is), a lot of things would change in the design of aircraft. The density of the air drives a lot of design decisions. A lot of aerospace engineering books are based upon widely accepted facts about earth's atmosphere and the different temperature ranges throughout it. So while the principles of aircraft design remain true, much of the testing and trade studies would need to be redone. Changes in density would change the speed of sound, thus altering the speed at which conventional aircraft would hit transonic flight (really high drag). While an F-22 might work on Pandora, it's gas-turbine engines wouldn't perform the same. Not to mention that Earth's atmosphere is 79% nitrogen and 21% oxygen. Changes in these values would render all known aircraft engines useless on Pandora. Designing all-new engines would be quite the chore. AND you'd need a combustible fuel in order to facilitate a high enough heat transfer into the combustion chamber if you wanted to get powerful thermodynamic cycle. This poses the same issues in my first paragraph. If there is no oxygen in the atmosphere, then every jet that used powerful engines would need to carry fuel and oxidizer which would limit range and turn every plane into a dangerous rocket.

I do imagine that a fictional place such as Pandora would have all the necessary resources to solve these problems, but it wouldn't' be done overnight.