Is there a good resource for designing buildings?  I enjoyed the videos on space craft design, but was unable to find anything specific to buildings.  For the most part it seems intuitive after watching the space craft design videos, but things like site choices and how to design buildings for use on the shore are not entirely clear to me.

Taking some inspiration from Stellaris' Species Rights system.

Currently we only have one species per city/building, this is defined by the avatar that builds them. The only way to change the species that live in the city/building is by removing all population and debarking passengers of the desired species. This might even be harder for new-style cities, since species DNA is per building.

I suggest that we get empire-wide controls over the species in our empire. List the DNA of all avatars in the empire and let us chose which we want to consider citizens, soldiers, crew, troops and officers.
Then whenever citizens are going to spawn they are chosen at random between any species that has the right to be a citizen. Same with crew and other spacecraft boarding, take a random species with the right to be that role.

Could extent it to also list species DNA of avatars that belong to allies or vassals. Other than that I don't know how else to determine which DNA should be listed, any ideas?

I seem to recall that we had the capability to maximize the ability points during the Avatar's creation.   Is this no longer the case, a bug, or am I missing something on the interface to add health, stamina or strength?  

Sticky Roofs
Building roofs are sticky. Step off the edge of a roof, such as the airport landing platform, and you fall a bit then get stuck with no way to get free.

Buildings and spacecraft under foot got some attention.

• Roof surface slope now correct for vehicles driving on top of buildings and spacecraft.
  
• Obstruction margins now easier to escape.
  
• Obstruction margins reduced slightly. Only affects buildings and spacecraft finalized after this update.
  

1. I drew the hull extrusion from the side, so I could draw the shape of a ramp going up to a flat area (5 sides).
   
2. I placed a hull void (box 1m thick 3m tall) in front of the edge of the ramp where you drive|walk onto it. The void is needed to allow things to move close enough to the ramp to get on top of the ramp slope. Otherwise, the obstruction margin keeps things away.
   
3. I drew a site around/under the whole thing because that is required of all buildings. Street lights are an exception but you won't be able to stand on top of portions that extend outside their site.
   

The stairs at the Hospital by Haxus building do not work. You walk through them. Jumping puts you up on top of them.

btw old member, new account, im revann1.

when the new designer comes out, i think it would be vital to take advantage and add more abilities that a species can have, with their respective ability points as well so no race is OP.

for example, you can have wings, you can plant parasites, disease, etc, but if there were more abilities that really differentiate a specie from another, it would give more lore behind each and every civilization.

- More than one advance ability can be picked, mixed and match, but if you pick too much youll probably end up with a weak tiny creature unable to walk & grab anything

a few examples of "advanced abilities" would be:

Parasitic Mounting: This would consist of being able to "Mount" any sentient creature with your new biologic weapon, but instead of just being able to "control movement", your entire character, including your inventory, will be replaced by the creature you just mounted, and you control that creature. the requirements are of course being small enough to do this act, relative to the creature you are trying to "control". dismounting that creature will kill it.  ofcourse, this ability would take an enormous amount of points, so youd have to discard size, strength, speed, endurance, health, etc in order to do this.

-    Making a delay to the mounting process, meaning a delay after you mount the victim in order to control him/her, would make the ability less expensive. can choose from instantly, to 5 hours.

- as a avatar, if you die when you are mounted on a host, you will spawn as your regular creature.

- if you parasitically mount a avatar,  the avatar will respawn after being successfully controlled by the parasite, therefore you can mount a player again and again after you die.

-    not being able to dismount from the host would also make it less expensive.

AI Issues With Ability:  having this ability would change how AI soldiers fight, creatures that have this ability and are in your military would automatically have to be equipped this "parasitic mount" weapon automatically so they can find a strong host first before they fight.  
this would make military with a host more valueble than regular soldiers (parasites without hosts), so storing them in storage ships & transfering them to the right ships & guard posts will be important, and would be a hassle no doubt. but FUN

Combat: during combat this one will be tricky, AI would just run up to the victim, and hit it with the ability, but if they have beserk trance they will activate it before & run faster / have more health, certainly would be interesting to see.

some examples would be:

- The Flood from the Halo Universe.
- "Xenomorphs" from the "Alien" Franchise.

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Berserk Trance: A Berserk Trance would let that creature enter a state where their HP and speed temporarily increases to higher levels, call it flight or fight, but a much-exaggerated flight or fight. it would be as a weapon, you equip it, then click it and it would be a temporary buff.

AI Issues with Ability: The only issues I see is AI just equip their weapon and shoot, I suggest if a creature has this ability, that creature would be rescripted to activate it before fighting, as well as run around during a fight, basically be beserk during their beserk trance. this would differentiate martial civilizations from other ones. 

Combat: In combat, they will prove to be more effective, but the creature would have to sacrifice health, ability to not wield a weapon (Advance ability detailed below), or ability to reach TL ( advanced ability detailed below)

some examples would be:

- Orks from Warhammer 4000 Universe.

- Wookies from Star Wars

- Brutes from Halo Universe



Night Vision: Having Nightvision would give you a equipment which you click on as if it were a knife that you always have, but it activates a temporary buff that lets you see during the night.

AI basically already have night vision :)

Can't think of any Examples.



 Queens: (VERY expensive, will not be able to afford important abilities & decent size) A  Host Queen would be a equipment that lets you transform when clicked, there is a delay of several hours once clicked, and only females can become queens. it increases the size of your creature by a lot,  as well as gives you an extra equipment in your toolbelt which lets you spawn creatures of your own species, (ONLY while in a ship with empty berths, if not it will not work) hurting your health while it does that, so you better have a medkit while you spam it. if a creature of an empire that builds a city has this advanced ability, the city will spawn a city queen at the capitol automatically, but it will not spawn any creatures, it only allows the city to have citizens, therefore to have citizens, you must build a capitol first, it would work as a farm, which spawns domesticated creatures.


- Military HQ Queen, having a Military HQ queen will make it more expensive, but this will spawn queens in your Military HQ which will quickly populate the military in that planet, so you can have military guarding/manning defenses quicker. 

- having a cooldown will make the ability less expensive. the more cooldown, the more significant the less expense.

- being restrained & not being able to move as a queen will make it less expensive, and will require AI to bring the queen food every so often from nearby. 

- to produce demi avatars & avatars, you can only Mount Queens. so for species with this ability, regular reproduction needs to be rescripted.

AI Issues with ability: AI creatures with that ability in the military would have to be rescripted to have a command in the crew commands to "become queen" (would do nothing if creature doesn't have ability)  only 1 crew member in a crew can be queen, and it has to be a soldier berth.  if not that creature will not be able to. If a player captain clicks the crew command button on a female soldier to become a queen, she will become the queen of that crew. A crew queen CANNOT spawn creatures outside of a ship, as the point of it is to fill berths renewably, the only way to track it would be killing the ship... that queen would then spam the creature spawn equipment until the crew is full or if a crew member dies, then it immediately spawns a new creature, filling the respective empty berths. meaning opponents/enemies would have to find the queen by tracking the origin ship and killing the queen. 

Combat: The purpose of this ability is it gives a civilization a different strategy rather than to use regular marine soldiers, this ability would be too expensive to as well afford to be able to reach Full TL, or being able to use weapons, so they will certainly have disadvantages. one thing is certain, this ability combine with the parasitic mount ability can be deadly, but the citizens would not be able to reach high TL levels to afford that combination (Reaching TL abilities & Using man-made weapon abilities detailed below.) but the key is it would give you a renewable supply of creature AI to fight with while in an invasion, unless they kill your ship, which is your key as the newly spawned creatures need a berth. so basically, Ships owned by creatures of this ability as also Hives. and Capitol's would be the "Hive" of the city.

Some examples of creatures that have this ability would be:

- Yanme'e from the Halo Universe. (not the flood)

- "Xenomorphs" from the "Alien" Franchise.




Reachable Tech Level: This ability would be the Max by default, so new players do not get confused, but you can decrease your reachable Tech level to allow you to have higher ability points to purchase the above abilities. in order for your species to not be overpowered, you would need to set your ability to reach TL lower than regular if you want other advanced abilities.

AI Issues with ability: simply, TL would need to be rescripted to take into consideration a species' reachable tech level, although stealing weapons and equipment from another species is always an option, which is why this is ability, is cheap.



Able to use Man-made weapons (very expensive): This ability lets your species have the cognition and intellect to be able to use manmade weapons, by default every creature has it, if a species does not have it, it has a lot of ability points to use on other abilities. Technically speaking, when you equip a gun, or a knife, or any tool not native to the creature's biology to damage, it will not show the damage option.

AI Issues with ability: simply put AI without this ability would not be able to use the damage mode of any weapon other than their biological weapon, although, with parasitic mounting, you can control another creature, who can use a weapon, and so can your AI.

Some examples of creatures that DO NOT have this ability would be:

- The Flood from the Halo Universe.

- "Xenomorphs" from the "Alien" Franchise.

- Actual Dragons from any type of fiction


Exploits

For those players who think finding an exploit is a astounding discovery, all new features will have their possible exploits, the issue will not be the exploit, but how to fix it. for example, lets talk about the following possible exploits:

Multiple Empire DNA exploit:   Creating multiple characters of the same empire with different abilities, could be controlled by simply :

1) implementing the "Biolab" building, basically, a designer for new characters with different abilities, which will newly spawn here. This Biolab will need a certain tech level to even build. haxus would decide if he decides to implement this feature with the new designer.

2) Without the "Biolab" you can create a character normally, but it should restrict you from changing amount of limbs, arms, body compositions, race (glabrian, avian, etc) and abilities. 


Creating new random characters just to teleport them to your location and use them. This exploit can be restricted by restricting teleportation by berth to a certain tech level as well, I always believe characters should not just teleberth anywhere just like that anyways. Restriction to a certain Tech Level would solve that perfectly, you will either have to look for that new character you randomly created, which rewards for that trouble, or get that civilization to a certain tech level to be able to teleport, which in my opinion is worth the trouble as well.

sure, being able to fix these exploits require restriction in certain aspects, for example being able to create any type of secondary race for an empire, but I think its worth having this idea implemented. and let's be honest, did we as a human race start with orcs and elves next to us? no lol, each civilization should logically start with 1 race anyway. 



i have more abilities such as shapeshifting, but i will post them later, let me know what you guys think below and if you can see these abilities actually being implemented.

When I deleted the police station in my colony, the client crashed to desktop.  
I deleted the building via the construction menu.
I was able to log back in immediately.
I was standing at my capitol at the time.  
I don't believe I had the police station selected in the list of buildings in the capital's building menu when I deleted the station, but I'm not certain.  That  menu was docked under the construction menu at the time.

We have the option to use empire colors in designs, so that the design uses colors specified as the empire's theme colors.

I modeled a cute little gas station building, and I decided to use the "Empire Secondary" color. Mostly because I wanted it to be different for other empires, and I used the secondary because I felt that it would be more suited than using the empire's main color.

My questions are:

• How do you guys use these empire colors? A lot? Not at all?
  
• What colors did you pick for your empire? And how did you order them? Darkest to lightest?
  
• What differences do you use for exterior and interior colors?
  

Street Light Tweaks
In old cities, street lights gave off dim candle light when there was no power.

Street lights got several tweaks.

• Street lights now give off candle light when there is no power. Attenuation distance is 5m, unless that is brighter than the light bulb was configured.
  
• The size of the glow sprite is based on the attenuation distance of the light.
  
• Maximum attenuation distance increased to 250m.
  
• Road highlight increment was changed to 10m, to make street light spacing easier. 40m is a good spacing.
  
• Light color presets updated. UI changed to a combo box, ordered by Kelvin value.
  

Currently the new-style buildings generally only require their primary construction material, this means that the old version of city progression is broken. The best example of this is the Airport Terminal, it only cost stone to build so you can build it right away.

With the old-style city progression you had to aquire metal before you could build a capitol or a bank, this gave a clear goal of what to start out building first. An airport terminal required electronics production, which meant that it was the end goal of a first city before going to the moon.

List of affected building:

• Capitol used to require metal
  
• Bank used to require metal
  
• Apartment used to require hammers, but could use textiles
  (See Merge House and Apartment for discussion)
  
• Well used to require shovels
  
• Airport Terminal used to require electronics
  
• Airport Repair Shop used to require electronics
  
• Casino used to require electronics and gen rings
  
• Many other buildings used to simply require hammers
  

I started making a kilometre long ship, with some big rooms.

I hadn't noticed it on my smaller ships, but even with 39 crew it feels pretty empty. If you try to distribute crewmen to different rooms, you might easily have a bridge the size of a large boardroom with only three or four people on it.

How hard would it be to add citizen posts to ships? So that NPCs sit in front of screen textures or stand around by machinery and control panels, without actually doing anything. If it's a problem of AI calculations, they could be more or less entirely static, not reacting to threats or doing anything except swivel a bit and look busy. Or, if it's no worse than on planets, they could walk up and down corridors like the citizens who appear near you. Unlike real crew, they would only have to exist when someone can see them.

A nod in that direction would go a long way to making big ships feel less lonely.