Patch: Continue Playing Option

[lordpalandus]

Continue Playing option for patch

[TH300]

Whereas in some games I'm happy when they're over (mostly on hard difficulty), I also play less serious games, where I just build up my colony. This style of playing has currently a limit in all Population Colony games. I see no reason to keep this limit.

[CK9]

In campeigns: just save an easy objective for when you feel done

We should try creating a "sandbox" colony game type just for casual colony building.  Would that be possible currently?

[lordpalandus]

Well thats kind of the idea behind the poll. I love the Colony Population games, lots of room and interesting combat from outside the screen. But it ends when you reach the population size.

Also, sometimes you can have enough people to launch a starship and enough people leftover to run a base (minimum of 4 scientists needed and 13 workers; CC, Nurs, and Univ, Agridome, Structure Factory and a Smelter)

[Highlander]

How about we edit the current missions and just remove the victory condition for the mission ?

If it cannot be removed, set the victory condition to something unachieveable ?

[TH300]

We could probably remove victory conditions from existing maps. But that would add 5 missions to the list which are almost not at all different from the default versions. The continue playing option would avoid this and the player would also not have to decide before starting the game.

[Lugia3]

Agreed, it would be better just to have a continue playing button. Highlander, I think the tutorials don't have any victory conditions, so it may be possible.

[lordpalandus]

Well I know that with starship games they are continous games until you build the last component of your starship.

 

[Norsehound]

If you can address a means of dealing with the excess workers and scientists after completing an objective I can be behind this idea.

Yeah, some games I felt the colony games ended too soon. But I wonder how bad things become when worker creation spirals out of control and your population is growing faster than you can create buildings for.

Two alternatives to make the colony games last longer are to increase the maximum population needed to win (say, 1000?)

Or allow starship construction to de-populate your colony. That way you get rid of excess workers and scientists and have to build back up again. To delay the end-game condition you just construct another starship and send people off, keep building.

[Hooman]

You can also just idle your nursery. Your population won't grow if your nursery is idle.
 

[lordpalandus]

Ya but with it off you suffer a massive morale penalty. All those children born boosts up morale more than the excess population strain does to the economy.

[TH300]

Yea, there are ways to stop population growth. But idling the nursery is terrible. If people really want to play endlessly, we ought to give them better means. The continue playing option won't hurt anyone, will it?

[lordpalandus]

The best way to limit population growth is to only build enough agridomes for your population and stop building it at that. Eventually, it'll drain down to zero and the "excess" will starve to death.

[TH300]

It doesn't work that way. Once people starve, your morale will go down to zero, just because people die. Furthermore, buildings will usually be idled (because people are missing to operate them) which will keep morale down. Even worse, the buildings that are idled are usually ones that you need. All together, its a huge mess and you're lucky if it doesn't kill your entire population.

[Flashy]

I usually disable the nursery. It is just a minor impact on morale compared to the colony starving, and the remaining supply of children will keep the colony functional for quite some time (as soon as you have several hundred colonists) without requiring more and more population slots. I managed to keep some colony games going for quite some time this way.

[Hooman]

Ya but with it off you suffer a massive morale penalty.

A disabled nursery isn't exactly a massive morale penalty. Plus, the main impact of morale seems to be on population growth, which you're trying to curb with this action anyway. Sure, morale may also impact build times too, but I've never considered that to be much of an issue.
 

[CK9]

I've never noticed a big hit on build time with lowered morale myself.

What happens if a map's .dll has no victory conditions?

[lordpalandus]

If theres no victory conditions wouldn't it just sandbox until you got bored or were overrun?

[Hooman]

Yes.
 

[Norsehound]

Well thats kind of the idea behind the poll. I love the Colony Population games, lots of room and interesting combat from outside the screen. But it ends when you reach the population size.

Also, sometimes you can have enough people to launch a starship and enough people leftover to run a base (minimum of 4 scientists needed and 13 workers; CC, Nurs, and Univ, Agridome, Structure Factory and a Smelter)

Recently I played an Eden population game, but when I launched the starship it said I failed the mission. I had more than 400 colonists though...

[Hidiot]

How many scientists did you have left after launching?

[Hooman]

Yeah, if your Command Center goes offline due to lack of scientists, you will lose.
 

[Norsehound]

I thought it was around 17 when I launched the ship, but I could have been mistaken.

[Hidiot]

The CC never goes offline, it can work on 0 scientists, oddly.
Of course, your colony needs to never go below 4 scientists to be able to grow. 1 for CC, 1 for Nursery, 2 for University. Then, you should have more then that, in case one or two die while you're training more.

But I was just wondering what failure conditions they implemented on that map... could be they made launching a evac module a fail condition.

[Hooman]

But I was just wondering what failure conditions they implemented on that map... could be they made launching a evac module a fail condition.

I've never seen such failure conditions. Usually it's caused by a lack of resources left to keep the colony operational.

There are some rather interesting checks that the game performs to see if you have all the prerequisites to do something. I don't think they're perfectly correct though. Things like having units in a garage, or a disabled building due to damage which you're able to repair, or a spare CC that was left offline when the primary gets destroyed can all potentially make you fail the mission.