Design Limitation?

Bear with me here, and let me know if I lose you. This is a little hard to explain without visuals.

The 3 way slider bar that allocates spending between the 3 areas of Military, Social, and Research is basically acting like a built in governer on all production. By this, I mean that even if your Industrial Capacity is set to 100%, it is impossible to actually GET 100% of all possible production you have available on any planet. About the only way you could do that is to produce buildings on every planet that effectively has an output of military, social and research that mirrors the ammount of resources set aside in the slider bars.

Example:

At my capitol, I have an Industry of 24 and Research of 24. On the planet where my capitol is located, I ALSO have a basic factory on a sqare with a 300% manufacturing bonus.

This gives a total industry of 56 on that planet (24 from capitol, 8 from basic factory, 24 from the 300% bonus)
This also gives a total of 24 possible Research from capitol.

Since my Industrial Capacity slider is set to 100%, I SHOULD be able to get 100% of all my available production on my capitol planet of 56, provided I have enough money (which I do).

However.... Since there exists a slider that divides the production between the 3 areas of production, its impossible to get the planet to actually utilize all possible output. Those 3 sliders are effectively acting as a governer to production. About the only way I can imagine it would work is if you figured out the math to make sure all output on every planet you own was exactly the same as well as equal in proportion to your 3 way slider.

Im just curious if this was the original intent? As it works now, you can effectively change the production around a little bit depending on what you currently need "Right Now" while not having to make too many changes to what you have produced on each planet. The only 'fix' would be if you had an economic slider bar for each individual planet, and even then unless the production was exact, you would still have wasted potential production. (even at 100% capacity)

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I think I understand your point. As you point out, the alternative is to give each planet its own economic slider, which would be a micromanagement nightmare (for many players anyway--I don't doubt that there are more than a few players who would relish this level of control). Yes, there is wasted potential production and I'm fairly certain that was intentional, but it is one of those situations where there isn't a clear-cut best solution.

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The tiny little downpointing arrows in the upper-right corner of each of the thee production boxes at the top of the colony screen can be clicked on. Doing this will prioritize the selected type of production (military, social or research, I mean) on that planet. I'm not sure what the math is exactly, or whether it focuses on them %100, but there's definitely a noticeable change in allocation. So you can make each planet specialize, if not have a precise slider.

That's what you get for not watching the tutorials!

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As you point out, the alternative is to give each planet its own economic slider, which would be a micromanagement nightmare (for many players anyway--I don't doubt that there are more than a few players who would relish this level of control).

Yes, and all two of them are playing Moo3. The rest of us would show up outside your office wielding torches and pitchforks if you did that

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MOOI had sliders for all planets, too, you know

And yes, it did cause havoc with micromanagement in the late game.

I really dislike the current system. You cannot effectively have planets specialize. For example, I wanted an industrial planet and a research planet. I made them... and the research planet had no spaceport. Unfortunately (disregarding social), that meant that I was always wasting half of the capacity of my research planet when Military was 50%, and half the capacity of my industrial planet when Research was 50%.

On the other hand, 2 identical planets, half labs - half factories - one starbase, would be using 100% of their capacities. Which means that generalized planets are always going to outperform the same number of specialized planets, so you should never make specialized planets, but rather make all your colonies identical clones. Which is boring.

I think that rather than 4 sliders - one for "overall output", and three for Military/Social/Research balance, a simpler system of 3 sliders would be better in every way. 0% to 100% output for each area, and forget the "overall output" slider.

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Actually I was thinking of bringing up that I wanted sliders for every planet. Sliders would be nice and could even be an option. I mean you have the 3 priority buttons so isn't that micomanagement anyways? I don't see how wasted production can be "intentional" anyways. Since you can manipulate how much you are spending on each production area and have 3 priority buttons I don't get it. You have a level of control to change your production emphasis but not enough to be efficient. That should be changed.

I don't think anyone wants to micromanage for the majority of their turns, but I absolutely hate the idea of wasted production and not being able to do anything about it. Most of the time the wasted production is when a planet isn't building military or not making any buildings so if the production in empty queues moved to where they could be used that'd fix everything. I don't see how that can be hard to code either.

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Actually having 2 identical planets with 50% labs and 50%factory would be the same as specialized planet of 100%lab and 100%factory.

The reason is when you put your spending 50%science 50%mili , even if u had 2 identical planets, still only 50% of their potential for each building is used.

HOWEVER, there is a reason to specialize. This is because when you put the "research" or "production" capital, it will increase those plantest specialized to 100% sci and 100% facoty and make them 200% of each. This way you do get an incentive to specialize. However you must also do somethings on all planets.

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I don't aggree with the original poster.

It is unrealistic to just take a planet and have nothing but 10 research labs on it. That people are asking for. I aggree with the current design and here is why (and I knew nothing of the mechanics before buying).

On of the great failings of 4x space strategy games is they abandon realism in persute of apeasing min/maxers. Having some planet just be a 10 slot holding tank for you research labs is contrary to the point of a realistic economic strategy game.

You can "focus" a planet to a specific area but that focus comes at a cost and rightly so. Law of diminishing returns is a big part of ecnomics and is part of the in game economy too. You can pile as many labs onto that planet as you want but after a point your just shooting yourself in the foot. Just like putting 10 McDonalds in a row on one block would not just instantly make 10x more then having 1 McD's there.

Think of your ecnomy in terms of larger scale. Make each planet functional at least somewhat in all aspecs to get max effeciency. Sure you'll have a couple specilist worlds , or this one will build ships faster then that one etc. They dont' all have to be exactly the same. Don't think of it as your not getting "max" effeciency , cause that would onyl be true if the game wasn't balanced around the concept that buildings only produce a ratio dictated by the overal economic policy. You only fund 30% to research then thats all any research lab produces across your empire. So if your 30% produced 3 points from each lab , and you wanted 30 points you would need 10 labs in your empire , not just one crappy rock with 3 labs churning out 100% of your empires research.

Then lastly there is the non obvious effects. For instance it would be nightmarshly harder to program an AI to specilized planets correctly and in the correct ratio's given all the variables in these games. Sure you a human who can be flexable and adapt can micromanage independent planets like that till every building you runs at 100%. The AI however just won't , because programming such an AI would be beyond hard. Other games have tried , and they all FAIL. You would outmatch every AI you play against constantly and then be complaining about how "easy" the AI is to beat. That has been the case with every single game in the past that allowed such things.

Much better for everyone as a whole if coders spend their time on the bugs rather then rewriting the entire AI routine ...which would fail ...and adding this wholy different ecnomic system you want screwing up every balancing point in the game. Just adapt to the concept that your economy is a function of all your planets put together working together focus a few of them that are important and concern yourself with the larger picture as any good ruler should.

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homanh said:

I thought you were totally wrong, but I modelled it, and you're right:

Scanarios: "R" denotes reasearch planet, "M" denotes military/industrial planet, "G" denotes generic mixed planet.

Scenario "Specialized", planet max production @ 100% research:
R: 100 Research.
M: 0.
Total: 100.

Scenario "Specialized", planet max production @ 100% military:
R: 0.
M: 100 Military.
Total: 100.

Scenario "Specialized", planet max production @ 50% military, 50% research:
R: 50 Research.
M: 50 Military.
Total: 100.

Scenario "Generalized", planet max production @ 100% research:
G: 50 Research.
G: 50 Research.
Total: 100.

Scenario "Generalized", planet max production @ 100% military:
G: 50 Military.
G: 50 Military.
Total: 100.

Scenario "Generalized", planet max production @ 50% military, 50% research:
G: 25 Research, 25 Military.
G: 25 Research, 25 Military.
Total: 100.

...in other words, in a static state, when you have 10 factories and 10 labs, it doesn't amount to a hill of beans how you distribute them across your planets (as long as you grab bonus tiles).

HOWEVER, there is a reason to specialize. This is because when you put the "research" or "production" capital, it will increase those plantest specialized to 100% sci and 100% facoty and make them 200% of each. This way you do get an incentive to specialize. However you must also do somethings on all planets.

And yes, that does play a role.

On the other hand, consider this new possiblity:

1xM + 1xR produce 100/turn at any setting.
2xG produce 100/turn at any setting.

And yet -

2xM produces 200/turn at 100% military.
2xR produces 200/turn at 100% research.

Thus, the most efficient way to play the game:

1) Gear all your planets for research. Build only the most basic structures. Set research to 100%. Sit for 50 turns.
2) Gear all your planets for industry. Build only the most basic structures. Set military to 100%. Sit for 50 turns.
3) Goto 1.

That way, you always get an output of 200 - except during the transition periods when you are replacing labs with factories, and vice-versa.

So... the system is still broken, since planets cannot specialize (unless they have super projects).

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arcticfire said:

Then lastly there is the non obvious effects. For instance it would be nightmarshly harder to program an AI to specilized planets correctly and in the correct ratio's given all the variables in these games. Sure you a human who can be flexable and adapt can micromanage independent planets like that till every building you runs at 100%. The AI however just won't , because programming such an AI would be beyond hard. Other games have tried , and they all FAIL. You would outmatch every AI you play against constantly and then be complaining about how "easy" the AI is to beat. That has been the case with every single game in the past that allowed such things.

No. Getting an AI to put industrial buildings on industry bonus tiles and etc is trivial. Getting an AI to optimize 3 variables is trivial too; they can do it way more effectively than a human. The algorithms were known to Newton when he developed calculus in the 15th century. Micromanagement is, in fact, the only thing an AI can do easily in strategy games.

Regardless, the original poster is not asking for sliders for each planet. He's asking for a better solution than the current one, which has questionable inconsistancies with reality. When someone asks, "Why do I have to hold CTRL-ALT-A-P to jump in this FPS game?" the answer is not, "Because the AI has trouble dealing with people who jump, so we made it hard to jump." The answer is, "We were paying more attention to other aspects of the game, but now that you point it out, we'll see how to make it better."

[Edit: I don't intend to put words into Stardock's mouth; I'm just stating my opinion. My impression is that Stardock typically gives the second answer.]

You don't seem to have much grasp of the real world, in which Kansas produces corn and Redmond produces software. There is no governmental policy dictating that 50% of the people in Kansas try (and fail) to write operating systems and 50% of the people in Seattle try (and fail) to raise corn. They tried that in the USSR, failed, and consequently Russia will be a backwater for the next 50 years.

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Why people who don't like what others have to say always seem to follow up their points with insults is always amusing. Ok lets talk about my "grasp" of reality.

Firstly don't try and confuse my diminishing returns example of McD's with your example of local consumer goods production. See the problem with your example , is both of your places fall under the "Social" category in game. They are both abstracted into the local economy.

The reality is the balance of our real world economy is very much dictated by where government applies our tax dollars (just like in game btw). Research / Social / Military production. The extent to which each is utalized is directly linked to where the tax dollars are applied. In our "free" society this comes , and I'll keep it simple

- Research Grants (science)
- Military Contracts (military)
- Tax insentive / Bail outs / Business tax breaks / building grants etc (social)

All 3 of those are totally dictated by how much we pay in taxes and where those taxes are applied. If our government for example has to put most of our taxes to producing for war guess what suffors ? Regardless how many rubber ducky factories there are they are not going to be used as the country puts all it's resources into building things in the gun factories. Those social "factories" are converted to produce military items or they go out of business cause no one wants to buy rubber ducky's in the middle of a world war. This is simplified but it's wrong for you to assume the developers didn't use real world economics to create this system. Your just thinking locally and not nationally. The economy in game is abstracted to what amounts to a national level.

In any case , as to the other point AI , I won't get into an argument with you about it because your obviously not a programmer and anytime someone who dosn't program says anything about AI they have no idea what they are talking about. But you feel free to point out the game that had super AI that was ultra human like that also had the level of micromanagement you are arguing for.

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First off, lets all just calm down a little bit. There is absolutely NO need to start breaking out the flamethrowers here.

Arcticfire: Yes, I did watch every single tutorial.

The point I was trying to make (and that other people seem to have understood) is that the sliders make specialization in one area very very difficult. In order to have 1 research point generated, you have to have 1 manufacturing point on that same planet that will 'pay' to convert that into 1 beaker of research so to speak. The inherant % limiter of the sliders just makes it so that every planet will have waste of potential as a default. I was simply asking if this was the intended design of the game.

The part where you can choose to specialize in one of the 3 areas by clicking on that little button in the top right is definitely the way to go when specializing. My only complaint there is that the game never actually tells you what % you are utilizing, and this lack of displayed information is prevelant throughout the game. IMHO (aka MY OWN opinion since its just what I personally like ) every single solitary number displayed on every planet needs to have a popup window that breaks down where every part of that number is coming from.

For example: If I put my mouse over Spending, I should see where they are getting that number (X ammount going to pay for buildings located on planet, Y going to provide A ammount of research, B of social, and C of Military... etc)
In this way, you would be able to see exactly how much effect specializing a planet will have. The computer can do all of this inherantly, and as stated above is one of the easiest things a computer CAN do.

Dont get me wrong. I love how complicated this game is under the surface.. its one of the coolest things about it for me. I do have other questions about the game mechanics that are not fully explained though (such as starbases and their effect on planets and the empire as a whole, but I am going to write up a whole other post asking for insight there later)

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