Idea for the goal in the late game - supply ships on orbit

[n9103]

If You want to add a drop of fuel to colony ship then you need a bucket of fuel to transport it. So mass of the ship was minimized and it has only fuell to fulfill a mission. Earth is overpopulated - there is no resources to make any colony ship able to travel beetwen planets of other solar systems.

I took a lake of fuel to get it to the system in the first place. No one's going to draw a line at an extra bucket.

[ssilk]

Hum. Think for example to the voyager probes. They travel currently with about 12 km/s through the space. Everyone can imagine the afford of power which was needed to bring them to the point, where they are now.
Now imagine this: Even with factor 100.000 more speed (=quadratic power: you need 100000 * 100000, thats a 1 with ten 0's more energy!) the probes would need about 10-12 years to the next system (alpha centauri) and experts mean, that humans would not be able to live there. So we need to go more distant.
And now take into account, there are relatively sure planets out there, where humans can live, but they must be really far away, 100 or 1000 light years perhaps.
So - if it would be possible to have that much power in chemical reactions (which has not even a hair of chance) - the power, which is needed to drive from one planet to another in the same system is really nothing compared to that.

A more or less realistic scenario, why a colony ship would stop at a planet is described in "the songs of distant earth" by Arthur c. Clarke, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Songs_of_Distant_Earth ).
I use that story to create an own:
A colony ship must stop half the way to its real destination, because it needs to refill its frozen-water-shields, because even a very small meteor shower at half speed of light has the energy to destroy a whole ship. The scout (us) lands on the planet and the drive of his rockets "wakes" the creepers and they fire rockets at us and the colony ship.

The colony ship has no other defense as its shields and must flee. When fleeing, the remaining scout ships was used to defend the colony ship. They fleed at the Lagrange point L1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point) because they want to to be as near to the surviving scout as possible and they don't have any scout ship left, so their only hope is the survivor.

The job of the scout is now to bring many million tons of frozen water into space. Because all ships where destroyed he will need also rockets and rocket fuel. After that first phase we build a space elevator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator). This needs immense electrical power and works a bit like trains.

Many more stuff is thinkable here.

[n9103]

Good Book, Great Author.
As for propulsion, our only viable techniques for interstellar travel that has any urgency (meaning solar sail/ion drives aren't suitable, as they are incredibly slow to accelerate) will be nuclear powered.
Whether it will be a Conventional or a Fusion-based approach is left to time to tell.

[kovarex]

This is nice idea, I will read the book.

[andzoak]

If You want to add a drop of fuel to colony ship then you need a bucket of fuel to transport it. So mass of the ship was minimized and it has only fuell to fulfill a mission. Earth is overpopulated - there is no resources to make any colony ship able to travel beetwen planets of other solar systems.

I took a lake of fuel to get it to the system in the first place. No one's going to draw a line at an extra bucket.

Fuell tanks, thermonuclear reactor, engine (or whatever) was lost due to creeper attack ;p

A more or less realistic scenario, why a colony ship would stop at a planet is described in "the songs of distant earth" by Arthur c. Clarke, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Songs_of_Distant_Earth ).I use that story to create an own:A colony ship must stop half the way to its real destination, because it needs to refill its frozen-water-shields, because even a very small meteor shower at half speed of light has the energy to destroy a whole ship. The scout (us) lands on the planet and the drive of his rockets "wakes" the creepers and they fire rockets at us and the colony ship.The colony ship has no other defense as its shields and must flee. When fleeing, the remaining scout ships was used to defend the colony ship. They fleed at the Lagrange point L1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point) because they want to to be as near to the surviving scout as possible and they don't have any scout ship left, so their only hope is the survivor.

I like that idea.

I don't understand how does frozen-water-shields works. Is it some like ablative plates on space shuttles?

[n9103]

Fuell tanks, thermonuclear reactor, engine (or whatever) was lost due to creeper attack ;p

Don't quit your day job.

I like that idea.
I don't understand how does frozen-water-shields works. Is it some like ablative plates on space shuttles?

Something like, but not really.

The point of the ice is that it gets hit by the various interstellar debris instead of the ship itself.
The ship is surrounded by ice, effectively turning the whole thing into something more like a comet than a ship.
This is one of the alternatives to electrostatic/magnetic fields that deflect the debris in the path of travel.
But instead of relying on electronics and power generation, it simply provides a large amount of impact resistant material to simply absorb the impacts.
The problem is, it relies on getting vast amounts of water into space.
Basically, it's more reliable and failproof, but takes vastly more energy to establish.

Considering you're sticking to a problem of not even being able to change interplanetary orbits, you shouldn't even consider this approach as viable and not creating planet-sized plot holes.

[ssilk]

I don't understand how does frozen-water-shields works. Is it some like ablative plates on space shuttles?

About, but much bigger. They are hexagonal plates of destillated, frozen water, about 20 meters in radius and 2 m in thickness.
In space, the plates is mounted to the other plates, think steel cables are a molten into it and the whole plate is smelted together with the rest of the shield. In the end i mean the shield had a radius of about 500 meter and 10-20 meter thickness. The shield is mounted at the front of the ship, so that the ship is in the "lee" of the shield.
The whole stuff is very heavy, more heavy than the spaceship, and its only possible to bring that to half speed of light, if you have a nearly endless source of energy.

Nuclear powered is the minimum. See this http://xkcd.com/1162/ !
In the book the author describes "vacuum energy" as this endless source of energy. Today there are other more or less serious theoretical physics, which say, that such a source might exist. In the book, the spaceship doesn't even need fuel-tanks, because the ship just produces light, enormous amounts of light, to accelerate. This drive is the ultimate weapon, and it would be easy to grill the whole planet with it.
Why didn't they do it?
The colonists in our factorio-story are in a conflict: they need the water to make sure, that they can travel secure to their target, but they don't want to create a genocide! And the hero is on the planet,,,

And he is fighting for survive on the planet. His endless energy-source was destroyed and he has to begin from scratch.

[ssilk]

This is nice idea, I will read the book.

I recommend also to hear the same named album from Mike Oldfield while reading. It's based on the book.

Not that I think the music would fit into factorio; the game has a completely different atmosphere!

[andzoak]

Considering you're sticking to a problem of not even being able to change interplanetary orbits, you shouldn't even consider this approach as viable and not creating planet-sized plot holes.

Practically that problem isn't necessary. They can travell accross whole solar system but there is only one habitable planet. They travelled many years to colonize that planet and hadn't resourcess to leave solar system. Colony ship was designed to only one interstellar travel by whole planet Earth. So they can colonize the creeper planet like America or slowly die due to run out of their remaining resources.

Colony sheep try to resolve problem in it's own way looking for resources at other celestial bodies of that solar system. But that is not effective. All will change when player build communication center and he establish link with ship. People from colony ship began to understand that is real chance to colonize the planet.

[RawCode]

Earth 2140 feature supply to orbit as main goal of the game with ultimate goal to leave planet, it nice game to view how it was implemented.

but...

it will be much more fun to launch supply in form of rockets (sometimes with nuclear payload) to creepers and other types of enemy units.

also something like playermade ion cannon sattelite will be full of win.

current grinding system does not motivate, it FORCE player to do something in order to survive endless creeper waves.

[n9103]

Another game with Orbital end game goals is the Outpost Series.
OP2 in particular has a decently flexible launching system, including some offensive payloads.
But like 2140, it's also an RTS.

As for current system, if survival isn't a good motivator for you, then perhaps you should try some non-creeper maps, or some limited dimension maps. (2500x2500 is a decent size.)
There's something to be said for simply building a large transportation system, without having to worry about security.

[ssilk]

People from colony ship began to understand that is real chance to colonize the planet.

Two questions: why would you want to go into a colony ship without knowing, what will await you. You can send probes out there, to investigate the system, you have a millions of systems within the next 1000 light years. How stupid would it be not to send probes to every potential system, before you send a colony ship there? And why by the hell would you build such a colony ship, without having a plan B in backhand. Not even airplanes of no-frills airlines start with such low reserve.

[n9103]

People from colony ship began to understand that is real chance to colonize the planet.

Your quote editing needs some adjustment, since I sure didn't say that.

[_0rbit_]

I have not read the whole thread, but if the initial story is an accident during colonization of another planet then I think there is a logical story line that could be followed. It also has implications for the game elements that should be there (some of which are not there yet).

When you colonize a planet and send out pioneering ships, these ships should be loaded with things that are needed for making the planet habitable or at least machines to make all these products on the spot. How else are you going to house all the people who are coming in the second wave of ships? The things needed range from food, housing, medical supplies, oxygen. It seems the game as of now is focussed a bit too much on other things.

First stage: Prepare the atmosphere. Let's assume there are things in it that are harmful and there are things lacking in it. For instance, oxygen levels are too low. There should be machines to "wash" the atmosphere to remove harmful stuff. Other machines add oxygen from processing soil. These machines were lost in the accident. They have to be produced, setup, maintained and ran.

Second stage: Produce machines to provide clean drinking water. These machines were also lost.

Third stage: Provide housing and infrastructure.

(Arrival of the second wave)

Fourth stage: Provide goods for the inhabitants.

Of course all the while the bases, villages, cities that are built need to be defended against the various alien races in a RTS type game.

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Perhaps the story of an accident is problematic, because it does not allow the player to colonize multiple planets in similar ways. Why not have some kind of colonization team that travels to planets to work their magic? This way multiple levels could be created in sort of a campaign mode in which ever more difficult alien races are encountered.

Just my two cents.

PS: I absolutely love the game. I ordered it the second I saw the demo. I would not really mind if it never does get a story line and is just about gathering, connecting, producing, like the old TTD was

[Kelidoskoped]

Factorio Space Program