This one is huge. In this response, I reply to the ideas presented and redefine exactly what I would imagine could be implimented into the program. Hence, this is a huge reply.
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Hmm, that's something I didn't actually think of...
This has shifted from what to do during an evacuation to when to commense an evacuation. And that... I wouldn't know how to program accurately or easily.
However, as for being able to pick what items to take from a colony that is evacuating, that should be possible but would require additional programming. We can just revise the table so that the option is possible. And the range of this option could possibly be affected by the amount of time you have to evacuate.
For example, if the planet is going to suffer from a cataclysmic volcanic erruption that is unpreventable and complete change/destroy the planet's ecosystem, and you know this will happen in 15-20 turns, that's plenty of time to evacuate in a very orderly fashion.
Thus, the table could look like:
1 - 10 Farm/Food production building
11 - 13 Federation replicator
14 - 17 Biosphere
18 - 20 Some other random technologies
21 - 25 Roll twice more
26 No technology taken
27 Take something from a lower tier
28 - 100 Player picks a technology from those that are built
Now it's just a matter of programming the interfaces and backend code that will allow the user to pick which building they're bringing. That's entirely possible.
But... if you are told that the Borg are coming (and at that point, I'm pretty sure even the Mizarians would want to get the hell out of Dodge) and they'll be there in ONE TURN (OHNOES!!), I would imagine that the ability for the player to choose would be severly hampered or removed. So now the table would probably change to something like:
1 - 20 Food buildings
21 - 25 replicators
26 - 30 Happyfuntechnologyforsurvival
31 - XX some other technologies
80 - 89 Take something from a lower tier
90 - 92 Take two technologies
93 - 99 Take no technologies
100 The player gets to pick
If your colony is rushing to get the hell out, chances are they will just grab whatever they can get, although they'll still try to focus on food and shelter first. I mean, one turn is not enough time to order an organized evacuation. It's essentially "get all the food and supplies you can and leave town now" type of deal.
Now, this idea of varying the chances of any particular event happening during an evacuation based on the amount of time to evacuate complicates things. There needs to be some sort of equations in place that will be able to automatically alter the base range values for each results. At present, I do not have such a system of equations, although I could probably develop some if given all the possible technologies that are available. I also do not know how this will effect the performance of each turn as the game attempts to resolve all of the orders, which is something that I'm currently ignoring. If the Romulans decide to launch a 5-pronged assult on your territory and you evacuate all 5, I do not know if it'll take a minute or two for the turn to resolve. I mean, these calculations by themselves will be VERY fast. But there's also ship movement, combat, planet management, all sorts of things and they all add up.
I love this discussion and I think it's turning into a great idea. However, I see it as an option that could be implimented once the main framework of the game is established and we have an idea of how effecient the game is, possibly something that can be implimented after the Alpha test. However, I'm also noting that this part of the program will not get called every turn, if ever, in any particular game. So the performance issues it raises may be nill simply because the evacuation event will be a rare occurance and thus makes it worth implimenting because of the increase in flexibility and play effenciency it gives the player when relocating the colony when it is used.
I would love nothing more than to give the player the most amount of options possible. However, for a game to be successful, it does have to be relatively simple. Thus, I would most likely stick to a purely AI-driven evacuation plan.
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Here's what I envision would be implimented at some point:
In the racial files for each race (empire and minor), there will be a list of technologies that are salvageable. Each technology will have a priority number and a base chance under a stress-free evacuation (20 turns or whatever the max amount of notification will be). Equations will be set up to determine the actual chance each technology has of being selected that will incorporate the amount of time available for the evacuation. More time means more ability to plan ahead. Less time means rushed decisions and less time to prepare. The equations will provide a small amount of variance. Thus, knowing things ahead of time provides a distinct advantage.
Note: I'm assuming that when your empire discovers some horrific event is going to occur, a pop-up box will be displayed and it will ask the player if evacuation plans should commense. If a player starts the evacuation, then the colony will stop all production and will sustain itself long enough to complete the evacuation. It is also up to the player to order ships to proceed to the colony once the order is given. On the last turn of the evacuation (or the player could force the evacuation before the catastrophic event in the system menu if a button is programmed to be displayed I guess - I don't know what you guys had planned for it yet), the game will compute how much space is available in the ships that are in the sector and then will evacuate until the ships are filled or the planet is empty, whichever comes first. For every X number of population units (I used 10 million as an example) one technology building will attempt to be saved using the racial table data files for evacuations.
Also note: the evacuation capacity of each ship will include the amount of people it can carry AND any equipment they are bringing. Having two seperate systems to track people and technology will only add complexity to the programmer and the player and is unneccesary. If a ship is capable of evacuating 10 million people (that's a ton of people but again, I'm just making this up to illustrate the point) then that ship can carry 10 million people AND the technology they salvage. Keep in mind, that can either be 0, 1, or 2 buildings in my examples. 100% accurate? Nope. Here's a good place where accuracy is less important than gameplay.
The game will now compute what the ranges are for each technology based on the amount of time the colony has been evacuating for. For every X number of people evacuated, the game will roll a number between 1 and 100 (or any other number, as long as the range is accounted for in all of the racial tables). It will then select which result occured.
Each technology will have a priority as I stated earlier. A priority of 0 means the technology is not salvageable for that particular race that is evacuating (this means no weapons for the Mizarians, and other exceptions can be taken cared of here). A priority of 1 means that the technology is part of the first table that will get checked. Also, part of each table will also have the following events that could occur:
Instead of saving a technology, randomly roll between 1-100 twice more times.
No technology is saved.
Attempt to save a technology from the lower table (this will be unavailable for the last tiered table).
Now, every time a technology option is selected, it will get replaced in the table with "Attempt to save a technology from the lower table". That means that if you save a federation replicator from tier 1 and it had a range from 20-29, rolling between a 20-29 a second time will result in the attempt to salvage a tier 2 technology.
I would also envision that this is left up to the AI. Some hardcore players would prefer the choice or even the chance of choosing, myself included. However, it adds some complexity to the game for the average player and I would recommend that salvaging technology is left entirely up to the AI.
Also, when it comes to the standard structures that drive colonies (farms/food, mass replicators, energy production, research buildings, databanks), there has to be some sort of solution on deciding how many of each building it could be possible to bring during an evacuation. Afterall, chances are a colony will want to bring as many food buildings and mass replicators as possible. Or perhaps they should not be salvageable at all due to their bulky size and only unique structures such as replicators, shield generators, charge collectors, and the like are salvageable.
Anyways, that's what I've got so far. When I have time (I don't know when that will be) I can look up all of the standard techonology buildings that are available and determine a rought guesstimate of what the range equations for each building could look like. The more time there is, the more chance of bringing 2 technologies for the price of 1. The less time there is, the more chance there is of bringing a lower tiered technology or even 0 technology instead. That's the goal.
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