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New item type: Unities
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All details here are subject to change, especially, but not exclusively, specific numbers. A first iteration on this should err on the side of being too restrictive because it's always easier to get players to accept less restriction than more restriction later.
Need some mystical-type history added. Unity has a dual reference to both sci-fi (the unified theory of everything which we still are looking for, and a riff off the "singularity") and to United Federation.
Unities, once found (except for buying through e promotions), will naturally decay to uselessness. The decay time depends on the unity, some will decay faster than others.
Once invoked, each Unity's action is either of limited duration, or are instantaneous. Once enabled, a Unity cannot be turned off.
Unities do things that, in general, cannot be done in other ways.
Unities are intended to be rare. Their decay will also aid in this rarity.
Options for finding them include:
- Only findable via arch min dig, not excavs, and not the manual digs, just the auto-dig but only for the current planet.
- This becomes an excuse to restrict number of excavs per arch min from what it is today to, perhaps, 1 excav for every other level over 10 (11, 13, ..., 29)
- Perhaps only arch min 30s can find these?
- Keep the chance of finding low (20 excavs per arch min for 20 planets, 24 hours = 9600 chances per day, so less than 0.01% chance of finding one)
- Maybe unities aren't found by the arch min, but through Massad's Henge instead ("channels the power of the constellations" or some such nonsense). The level of the Henge would impact the frequency of checks, the chance of finding something, the level of what is found, or some combination thereof. Assuming a level 30 henge, it would check every, say, 36+/-12 hours (24-48 hours), with about a 5% chance of finding/creating something useful (so this would work out to less than 2 a month, I think, on average). Could have the henge drop a level every time it finds/creates a unity, which could use up halls pretty quickly. I bet that most players would pay that halls cost quite readily. Arch mins still can be nerfed, but this method uses up an extra tile on players' planets that they might currently use for space ports.
- As for the henge itself, I don't know that it should be a glyph plan, or even permanent (as in, abandon planet, it goes bye-bye). But only found via arch min digs. Upgrade with halls, yes, but arch min digs required, and keep its likelihood nice and low to keep them somewhat rare.
Other methods may include:
- Finding from spy missions against AIs.
- Flipping an AI planet may also uncover a small number, e.g., Trel may have 1-2, Saben and Diab may have more (3-5?). This also leads to needing these to respawn a bit more frequently.
- Forum contests
- Essentia promotions ( non-decaying )
- In-game contests (which we don't have today, but these would make an excellent prize if we can come up with such)
Unity containment systems are large, and they are too unstable to send via SST. 4,000,000 hold is required for each one, limiting the trade of them to uni 18 and up (or legacy hulks).
18? Yeah, if you use a Chromatic Unity on your level 19 space port, you can then launch a regular hulk.
Various kinds (more can be added) of Unities. Each type come in multiple flavours as well, with varying degrees of usefulness.
Names of Unities reference either a former player or the current player who proposed the action (even if they didn't know it). Some liberties have to be taken to make the name work, so these are not necessarily actually their names.
Each Unity comes in multiple types. Generally the higher type number, the better, but this is not a requirement.
Not all Unities will be available in the first roll-out. A few easier ones should be chosen to start with to phase the roll-out.
This is the first one I think we should do. I've given it this name because the first way it'll be given out is by Lacuna Expanse Corp as part of the tutorial.
This Unity allows you a free species redefinition. Generally, when you start the game, you have no idea what to set your affins to, but after you play the game for a bit, you have a better idea. This gives you that re-roll chance.
Expiry: 60 days.
- Type 1: 45 points (standard spread)
- Type 2: 55 points
- Type 3: 65 points
- Type 4: 75 points (max after gene lab 30)
- Type 5: 80 points (only to be given as Christmas gifts, etc., never ever found)
This multi-coloured Unity adds one level to one building for a period. Max level is 31. Not all buildings will be Unityable. The university won't be, but SAWs, spy training (so some spies could get up over 2600?), production buildings, including glyph productions. This would also (temporarily) work around the limit of level 20 on things like apple orchards, though that'd likely be entirely a waste of the Unity. Having a SAW 31 may help fend off fleets, though.
Expiry: 30 days
- Type 1: Effects last for 7 days.
- Type 2: Effects last for 9 days.
- etc. (how many types?)
This grey-coloured Unity instantly expels spies from the planet/station. (Based on Petronius' Keep suggestion)
Expiry: 60 days
- Type 1: Cult spies only
- Type 2: All AI spies
- Type 3: All non-allied spies
Use of this Unity renders the colony/station impenetrable to view from the temple of drajilite for the duration. (Based on Zed's Henge suggestion)
Expiry: 60 days
- Type 1: Effects last for 7 days.
- Type 2: Effects last for 9 days.
- etc. (how many types?)
Use of this Unity improves one affinity by one point for 7 days, max of 8 (!!). (Based on The Collective's Keep idea.) This is a rare affects-all-colonies Unity. All types have an effect for only 7 days.
Expiry: 15 days
- Type 1: Manufacturing
- Type 2: Deception
- Type 3: Research
- Type 4: Management
- Type 5: Farming
- Type 6: Mining
- Type 7: Science
- Type 8: Environmental
- Type 9: Political
- Type 10: Trade
- Type 11: Growth
(EXTREMELY RARE) A boost of happiness relative to next colony cost for that empire. Probably with some sort of upper limit. (Based very very loosely on Sentinel's Keep suggestion.)
Expiry: 5 days
- Type 1: 75% cost (max of X)
- Type 2: 90% cost (max of 1.5X)
- Type 3: 95% cost (max of 2X)
- Type 4: 99% cost (max of 5X)
Speed boost to an in-progress fleet. This might be a bit challenging to implement, but we can keep it in mind.
Expiry: 30 days
Build boost. Drops some time from the build queue. (References xfiles)
Expiry: 30 days
- Type 1: 1 hour
- Type 2: 8 hours
- Type 3: 24 hours
- Type 4: 7 days
- Type 5: 30 days
- Type 6: 60 days
(Named for Wasteland who gave me the idea inadvertently.)
Required for reassigning stations from one alliance to another. Once this is implemented, it's expected the admins will no longer assist in merges or splits of alliances (dire circumstances excluded, but I can't imagine such a case).
Expiry: 60 days
- Type 1: reassign one station to another alliance. The station's modules all lose two levels during the transfer.
- Type 2: reassign one station to another alliance. The station's modules all lose one level during the transfer.
- Type 3, Type 4, Type 5, Type 6: same as
type numberminus 2, but degrades by two types during the transfer. This means types 3 and 4 become types 1 and 2, respectively, after use, effectively allowing two transfers. Similarly for 5 and 6 becoming 3 and 4, respectively, effectively allowing three transfers.
Any other ideas that don't have a more obvious name can reuse these:
- tsee (empire name?)
- cxreg
Storing thoughts on how this could be implemented.
Unities would be stored in their own table, much like ships, with the following fields:
id (default)
class (each unity implemented as L::DB::R::Unity sub-types, like ships)
type (integer)
date_found
expiration_date (set this date to +5 or +100 years for essentia-promotion ones)
active (boolean)
body_id (which body it's on, when active it's either empire-wide or just on this body)
building_id IS NULL (which building it is affecting if it affects buildings such as the Chromatic Unity and if it is active)
Expiration date could be dual-used: if active is false, it's the date/time that Unity simply disappears, if active is true, it's when the Unity's impact is over (and the Unity simply disappears). This means that when we go looking for active unities, we just look at active (and maybe expired date not yet past, unless we put that through a scheduler to delete). And when we look to delete unities, we only look at expiration date. But when we activate a unity, we have to change the expiration date to now + duration (obviously except for instant actions where we simply delete it) and reschedule it.
Need to implement a number of "effective_level" functions and such to look all this up in a single place. This may be done as a Moose-style lazy attribute of buildings, affinities, etc. This would mean completing LSO issue 255.
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Unities with a duration may be able to use essentia to activate: 2E to extend duration by 25%, 10E to extend duration by 50%?
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Unities that can target other empires? For example, a Unity that could be used to temporarily reduce another empire's affinities (no lower than one)? The body_id would get set to the homeworld of that empire. Or maybe using that Unity becomes a spy action (in which case the duration should be longer than otherwise).