Starting PQs for each race and strange results with tiles

There do appear to be some oddities--this is likely because some of the PQ calculation is tile-count based, while some of it is percentage based.

That *is* a strange result. Bonus tiles are calculated as a percentage of overall tiles rounded down, the exact percentage depending on the planet type. Thus PQ ability can either increase the number of bonus tiles, or more often have no effect. It can *never* decrease the number of bonus tiles. And it doesn't in my game. (10% bonus with Thalans for example...you still have 2 bonus tiles)

Can you doublecheck? I've never seen any problems like this with the bonus tiles before (and I did a fair bit of testing to work out how it all worked). Perhaps what you're finding is a bug in the neutral alignment bonus?

Also there seems to be some randomness. i always notics that sometimes i got yellow squares on my second starting planet and sometimes not. and i think its the same with the homeworld. the max usable tiles is random i think.

I have had a bit of a different problem but it is related.

I created a tech that gave a 15% PQ bonus if researched. So on average each planet that I controled would increase by 2-3 PQ wich would be awesome later in the game when everything is built up. When I researched it it did not work. So I don't think that it is percentage base counted wich I think isn't right. I also double checked and all of my coding for that tech is correct...

bodyless, I've seen that on my 2nd world before. There are several different types of planet. They all have a possible range of starting PQs and an improvement potential which is a percentage of the initial pq (plus race bonuses). The starting PQ ranges often overlap, so for example there's one type of planet that can be class 7 with 1 bonus tile, and another that can be class 7 with 2. It's the planet types that can be random (not sure if that's true for all races, but definitely for some).

Ultimit, PQ race bonuses seem to be applied *only* when you colonize...you won't get the bonus to planets you conquer or influence flip, or to planets already under your control when you research that tech.

I retried it about 4 times, and got same results. Note that I think I was using a Tiny universe for all of them, and have noticed some changes when I put it up to Gigantic. However, it seems consistent when the game settings don't change: I still only get 1 bonus tile per level on the homeworld when using PQ+ bonuses. I think the homeworld has some constants, and the homeworld is modified in some way by the PQ+ bonus but that it's consistent for the homeworld at least. The secondary planet does seem to have some variance in its bonus tiles (when I tested races that have two planets; but then again you don't actually start with that colony, so its stats could change from game to game).

My theory was that for PQ 1-9, they get 0-1 tiles per level, and for PQ 10-19, they get 1-2 tiles. I haven't tested this, but it's a gut feel from my experience with planets so far. It's possible that the PQ+ bonus changes the "tile bonus class" of the planet in some way despite the increased PQ.

My suggestion to the developers would be to do something like this: Store planet base PQ, planet terraformed PQ, planet current bonus PQ in separate variables rather than simply change the actual PQ. Keeping the true base as a separate variable and making others for modifications and bonuses would help stop the PQ problems that I have read about, assuming that the tile count on the planet are supposed to always match the PQ value (which is intuitive I guess). Then the planet has race-independent stats which are the same no matter how many times it changes hands.

Example:
Base PQ: 10
Terraform PQ: +2 per level
Terraform Level: 2
Colony Bombardment Penalty (from wars): -3
Current Natural PQ: 10 + (2 x 2) - 3 = 11
Race Bonus: +10% = +1
Current PQ: 12
Number of Tiles: 12 (same as PQ)

Perhaps when it changes hands via conquest then it reverts back to its natural PQ? Also, I think it should be possible to repair damage from conquest via a building like terraforming to bring the planet back to its natural PQ, but it should cost a moderate amount to do so. This means that damage is temporary, but that if you conquer a planet with a PQ-damaging effect then you have to spend time to clean up the mess. (In Master of Orion, you had industrial waste which would reduce the quality of planets, but if you cleaned it up, it would return to its original state. That was the concept I was thinking of).

I retried it about 4 times, and got same results. Note that I think I was using a Tiny universe for all of them, and have noticed some changes when I put it up to Gigantic. However, it seems consistent when the game settings don't change: I still only get 1 bonus tile per level on the homeworld when using PQ+ bonuses.

I said retry it *without* using the neutral alignment. If you do this, you'll see there's always 2 bonus tiles per level on Thala, whether you take 0, 10 or 20 PQ bonus. As I suspected, what you're seeing is a bug in the application of the neutral alignment bonus, which in the case of Thala gives 21 tiles each time. The orbital terraformer gives similarly screwy results.

My theory was that for PQ 1-9, they get 0-1 tiles per level, and for PQ 10-19, they get 1-2 tiles. I haven't tested this, but it's a gut feel from my experience with planets so far.

I've already told you how it works. Every planet has an "enhancement potential" depending on its planet type. This is a decimal between 0 and 1 which is multiplied by the base PQ (with racial bonus included) then rounded down. That's the number of bonus tiles you get per level.

Look in the "planetdescriptions.xml" file if you don't believe me. You'll also see that for certain PQs, there are several possible planet types. EG class 7 can be any of Ocean, Jungle, Desert and Ice. Desert and Jungle will give two bonus tiles per level, Ocean and Ice will give 1. You can also see why there's never any variance in a races first planet...there is only one planet type with starting PQ 10-15. However, there are several possibilities for the low class planets you get as planet 2. You'll never see any variance in Mars because its type is set. For the others, only the class is set so the game chooses randomly within the types that can have that starting class.

I did it without Neutral alignment and found similar results.

Can you post screenshots? I've done it with 3 different versions of the game including the latest patch and never once seen what you claim. What version are you running?

Using version 1.2 Here are some screenshots of the game settings. Note that when I use PQ bonus abilities, I only get 1 yellow tile on the planet, but normally I would get 2. I've tested multiple times and I get the same result no matter how I go about upgrading those tiles. This only seems to happen when using this race which starts with a PQ 15 planet. Others with 10 PQ planets don't seem to experience this problem. All I can think of is that the planet type is fixed and the bonus tiles are different for a PQ 10-15 planet than for a PQ 16-20 planet.

I suppose I should dig around in the data files to see what's going on.

[PlanetDescription]
[Name]Testing123[/Name]
[ColorScheme]Earthlike[/ColorScheme]
[UsableElevationRange]0.35,0.7[/UsableElevationRange]
[EnhancementPotential]17[/EnhancementPotential]
[ClassRange]10,15[/ClassRange]
[/PlanetDescription]

[PlanetDescription]
[Name]Eden[/Name]
[ColorScheme]PerfectPlanet[/ColorScheme]
[UsableElevationRange]0.35,0.7[/UsableElevationRange]
[EnhancementPotential]10[/EnhancementPotential]
[ClassRange]16,100[/ClassRange]
[/PlanetDescription]

Getting a PQ bonus for this race pushes the type from the first one to the second (via ClassRange). Its enhancement potential is less. I expect this to happen for Thalans with any PQ bonus. It should also happen to Iconians, but only at PQ +20%. ** I just tested this theory and it was correct. Would this be a bug? It doesn't have negative effects on most other planets. It's just that the potential of a planet with 15 + 6 bonus tiles is better or equal than one with 16-18 + 3 bonus tiles. This may be a minor balance issue with planet types. However, when you reach PQ 20, it goes back to being +6 bonus tiles.

That is very weird. I don't know why you're getting different results to me, unless they changed the way it worked in 1.2, but then I didn't see a mention of it in the changelog. Your explanation makes sense, it just doesn't work like that in the current beta or the earlier versions I tried it with. In those cases the PQ bonus doesn't change the planet type even when it moves the planet outside its usual class range, so Thala still gets 2 bonus tiles in the 16-18 range. By the way, you can test more precisely where the bonus tile thresholds are by editing the raceconfig file. This allows you to give any PQ bonus you like, even into the 1000s of percent.