Find another lifeform on the planet who is also

[Mauslag PIngman]

I launched some rockets and got bored so I decided to explore with trains. My reward is lots more biters, more resources and lakes but nothing new and there isn't much to do after you've launched lots of rockets and researched the white sciences. Lets say you launch 50 rockets and you get to communicate with your home planet. They send orders to explore the planet as in bring electricity and radar to the surroundings.

What if the game rewarded you for exploring and "civilizing" the planet? Lets say if you explore and run powerlines through 70% of the land in a 20 mile radius (easy to do in peaceful) you run into an intelligent life form, someone who has also built a base and maybe some kind of city. Lets say its a base for now, much like your own with belts and machines. He's injured or something and needs a ton of resources to finish his project which could be a rocket or something else. He can give you the secret of creating large fusion reactors, which it turns out your race doesn't have. He can be a bit of genius so he's invented a universal translator that makes it easy to communicate. He needs a million each of iron plate, copper plate, steel and on and on and a million pounds of steam. You'll need to build a rail system and stations to deliver all that if you want the technology. He can have a few other things like faster than speed of light travel. Maybe he needs parts for his fusion reactor so he can build a massive airtable for his gigantic ship that looks just like a copper statue of Winston Churchill. I'm thinking of the huge statue your citizens lifted and carried to another location in a game by Introversion called "Darwinia" or something like that. So all that stuff you bring him lets you build this thing so you can push his ship into position for launch.

The nuclear power in the game creates vast amounts of power without much downside. It could be rigged to explode or melt down after generating so much power giving you an incentive to get the really wonderful huge fusion reactor technology that doesn't explode or create dangerous wastes while providing limitless power.

Summary: you've launched 50 rockets and your home planet contacts you with a probe. They want you to explore the planet you're on. You have to bring power and visibility with radar and power poles to 70% of a huge area. This is an area beyond where you've been working. You reach that goal and it triggers the discovery of another being and his massive base somewhere out there in the dark, biter filled wilderness. He's been there out in the dark all along and you didn't know. He needs help in the form of lots of resources so that he can go home to get fixed up from whatever is ailing him. You are rewarded with a universal translator just for talking to the dude and also massive fusion reactor if you supply all his needs. You send a message to your home planet informing them of the deal and they approve it.

This would give you a reason to use artillery to make lots of territory visible. It would also encourage the use of trains and signaling.

[ssilk]

Have you ever explored much more than — hmmm — 50 Quadratkilometers of land? That’s about 7 kilometers wide in horizontal/vertical direction. It’s not THAT far. And it grows quadratically with each kilometer. Saving/loading can suddenly take minutes. IMHO it’s not playable under Windows. It’s really painful if you want to have auto-saves.

Mac and linux users can turn on background saving. But those saves can get huge very fast, 100, 200 megabytes is no problem. And you need a lot of RAM. Under 8 Gig: forget it.

[Mauslag PIngman]

I've got a huge sprawling base right now and haven't noticed any problems with saving. If you want to see it I'm online. The game is Pingman's Trains I think.

I'm killing off the biters before I build most of the time. That might help. The biters don't expand into my territory and don't invade except when I'm shelling. I'm guessing those thousands of nests and roaming critters would be a strain on the computer. I don't have that. Maybe I just haven't gone out far enough.

Playing in peaceful I don't have a lot of defenses as they're not needed. I take down my firebase after I'm done shelling and rebuild it deeper into the wilderness. Don't have millions of turrets or mines and I'm on an alienware so not the cheapest rig. I probably have 8 gigs of ram. Its about 8 years old.

[ssilk]

You don’t read carefully. What I’m speaking about are not things like the native inhabitants or muchos turrets.

I said, the size of your map (measured as diameter of explored land) has a quadratic impact on your save-time (and load time). Which means, when you for example have a diameter of your map of 5 kilometers and a saving-time of 5 seconds (for easier calculations), then with a diameter of 10 kilometers the save time will be not 10 seconds, but - hm - 20 seconds. And with 11 kilometers it’s nearly 25. Those numbers are just an example!

If you have turned autosave on, which I can really recommend on such big maps and you have Windows so you cannot turn on background saving, this wait time has a very hard impact on the game-fun.

But maybe you don’t think the map needs not to be such big. But for me that’s where the fun begins.