EXODE - Space Colonization

Note that every single value and process proposed in current procedural generation may be modified later.

Food items generation, especially, respect a very base setting which will be modified for later planets.

Before you analyze into numbers below, you should understand that "luck" is not a direct factor in EXODE.

The economic value of a content depends on an evolving situation of supply and demand in varied categories.

But one persistent observation is that food items can be used to raise back stamina and happiness in citizens.

Having access to “good food items” is then interesting to increase the output of your citizens and colony.

But not only is this strongly influenced by your crafting decisions (making a good menu out of “weak items”), your research focuses (obtaining more out of your food), your away teams focuses (finding more items, finding rarer variants, exploring further, focusing on this instead of other collection..) and production teams (performance of your cooking team)…

It is also influenced by other parameters such as accessibility of this resource, abundance of it, resilience of this supply over time, easiness to prepare it and to extract its nutrients in a menu.

This means that even if one's food could have better looks or nutrients than others, other parameters are also used to determine its compatibility in collection, crafting and production, which ultimately will define “how useful” you made this food to you.

“Early game” food, which means accessibility in your first region and non-dependence on a rare region or season, is also different than “late game” food which more heavily depends on food reserves and volume in a global galactic economy.

In addition, some food can have a weak “raw” version, a superior “prepared” version, and an even superior cooked, steeped or rare variant!

So, you should look at all angles when analyzing things.

With all the parameters in a planet, there should be nothing really related to luck: but all uniqueness expressed in different areas. This creates interesting risks and conditions for any game.

The number of different food items to roll is determined with (10 + number of relevant wildlife + number of relevant plantlife).

This should make about 12 to 30 different food profiles on any given planet, with a strong average of about 16 to 18 different profiles.

This, in turn, gives many chances to have all food types (meat/fish, fruit, vegetable) represented on a planet, but also some being more abundantly represented than others.

Number of relevant wildlife and plantlife on a planet are themselves heavily influenced by planetary type. For instance, Jungle worlds have more of them.

Having access to more varied profiles allows to design more varied menus. However, is still not as strong as having accessibility and volume to a usable and exploitable food profile, and exploring food variants (different versions to prepare one's food) can also allow to compensate for it.

For every individual food profile, the system will then roll for Meat/Fish, then for Fruit, and if not rolled as such, will consider the most frequent type to be Vegetable.

This allows Meat/Fish rolls on some planet to be more invasive, or less invasive compared to Fruits ; and same for Fruits vs Vegetables ; allowing to express planetary type further.

This also allows Meat or Fish expressions to then fight each other in a secondary roll and to separate population of carnivorous content (meat + fish) and non-carnivorous content (fruit + vegetable).

Chances for any food item to be Meat or Fish are (number of relevant wildlife) * 3, with a minimal 15%.

It is then influenced by planetary type:
+5% for Terrestrial and Exotic worlds
+10% for Ice, Jungle, Swamps and Forests worlds
+15% for Oceanic worlds
-3% for Deadlands worlds

When rolling Meat/Fish, another roll is then made to determine if it's a Meat or a Fish.

Base chances for Fish instead of mean start with a low 10% on this second roll but with bonuses as below as example values:

+80% for Oceanic Worlds
+70% for Ice Worlds
+50% for Swamp Worlds
+30% for Jungle Worlds
+25% for Exotic Worlds
+20% for Terrestrial and Forest Worlds
+5% for Steppes, Lava, Desert, Chasms
+0% for Deadlands

Food that is not Meat or Fish on its first roll will make a roll to see if it is a Fruit. It begins with 20% chances with the following bonuses as example values:

+60% for Jungle worlds
+40% for Forest and Exotic worlds
+30% for Terrestrial and Swamps
+20% for Desert, Oceanic, Rocky, Steppes, Chasms,
+15% for Lava
+10% for Ice and Deadlands

Food rolls its colour, with 40+ color description groups separated in two pools: it has 50% chance to have “a developed colour” (ie. “royal azure”, “jade green”) and the rest to have a simple colour (“azure”, “green”).

Name

Food name is generated thanks to our common name algorithm.

Description

To give you an example of the food description generation program, it works around the concept of generating its description with 80% chance to receive a size parameter in it, and 100% chance to receive one colour, one look aspect (ie. smelly) and one “piecing aspect”.

This can work around formats such as a collection of <size> <look> <colour> shapes, giving for instance a collection of small smelly black shapes.

Esthetics

“Picture Variant” and “color” values (from 1 to 1000) are example values which can be used to better represent this item in addition to its food type.

Home environment

Food has a home planet but may also receive separately a specific Region and Season.

If so, it can be mostly be collected only within said environment or period of time.

Regions and Seasons are very specific to your planet so this adds to the uniqueness of the situation.

Easiness to Collect

In addition to its home environment, other values can influence how easy or not it is to collect it.

“Reserves” determine the quantity of food units that remain to be collected.

“Stealth” make it more difficult to detect whenever Away Teams make a roll to detect a spot of this resource.

“Extraction Difficulty” can prevent it from being successfully collected whenever Away Teams make a roll to collect it.

Variants

For all attributes below, several “variants” of the same food are also created Attributes

Here follows a list of attributes for a food item:

All parameters with a * have a strong influence already included in current development.

Name Description Home* (planet, region, season) Esthetics (picture and color values) Easiness to Collect* (units left, stealth, extractability)

… described above.

Size*

Size is used in compatibility to the Dish types you can use when crafting food.

Looks*

Looks is factored as a global factor to cantina menus, but can be ignored for travel rations when crafting food.

Fragility*

Fragility is directly factored when “Preparing Food”, which is the first step of food crafting. It acts as a difficulty to prepare your food.

Toxicity*

Toxicity increases chances for Food Buffs and Debuffs when generating food. It can also influence other negative events when eating.

Nutrients*

Nutrients is directly used to Texture hardness Heaviness (on stomach) Exotism

For every single attribute we then currently make a 1-1000 roll.

We plan to make that better later according to observations on game balance, such as having two 1-500 rolls added together.