On Gates: Pros:
Makes Economy/Commerce (Cash) and Science/Experimentaton (Gates) necessary for growth, while Industry/Manufacturing (Ships) and Weapons necessary for war.
Small Empires not necessarily that limited, as Caps are Galactic, not Planetary. Cons:
Hyperspace immediately becomes the worst tech after the first week or so. Excuses to research it are few.
Rebalance of the economic model necessary so that a “Standard” growth curve with “Standard” trading is blocked and unblocked at a reasonable speed, but also so that abnormal strategies are possible.
Redesign of the HUD to more prominently feature these caps.
Remember, Caps introduces more decisions and strategies, but also removes others as well.
What to do about conquest? Suggestions:
I still suggest connecting Hyperspace and Warpgates if you prefer simplification.
Maybe you should consider having start Level for the new tech system be something like 3 or 5?
Have each Gate upgrade cost an additional Cap.
So Level 1 Gate with X2 takes 1 Gate Cap. Level 2 takes 2 Gate Caps. Level 5 takes 5 gate caps, and boosts speed by X6.
On Ratios
Understood what you went for, but not the specific math itself. Slower is the way to go! Pros
Terraforming maintained.
Strong stars maintain significance.
Help prevent inflation. Cons
Hard to understand! At least as presented. (Then again, no explanation for normal terraforming)
May change the balance of the economic model.
But would the e/i/s you just conquered produce until you gained more slots? I would say no, and the calculation for e/i/s output would change to reflect the MIN of actual or slots.
Doing something like e/i/s capping by using existing techs might get a little confusing. If you’re talking about getting rid of Terraforming, how about introducing something like; Facilitating.
‘Facilitating’ allow you to build up stars to a certain number, allocated by your specific tech level. So say Facilitating 1 allows you 10/6/3, you’d be allowed 20/12/6 at F2, 30/18/9 at F3, etc etc. Whether you want that or saying each Facilitating level gives you up to ‘15’ (random number) allocations of e/i/s of your choice (which would mean there would still be choices of which path you wish to take).
I can imagine a situation where its just better to grow your science and weapons, and go and take industry rather than research and build it. Especially if there is less money sloshing around and plays are only building 5-10 new industry a day and every star you take has a few industry on it anyhow.
I agree that I think if you are over your quota of industry then they should just stop producing. For consistency, I would use the same feedback for Science and Economy about being over quota.
BUT! I think this is one of those game design things that you shouldn’t fix until you know its a problem. Perhaps the focus on Weapons is a legitimate tactic.
I think the changes proposed by Jay are a great idea. It might not address the supremacy of weaps, but I think it puts the rest of the techs on equal footing and keeps them relevant until end game.
Specifically wrt to captured ind, an expanding empire would need to keep researching Manu to create capacity. Same for sci. It would also impose constraints on players who receive large cash gifts, as it would take some time to create capacity to deploy. So expanding empires would have constraints on their growth,that they would need to manage. Declining empires would have excess capacity, whereby they could immediately deploy cash gifts. So additional balance is introduced.
In fact, it might be cool to allow trading in excess slots, like airlines do for airport gates.
Most importantly, in my view, is that this system is, as Jay points out, simple. Simple enough for me to understand. I have observed in awe the impressive mathematics deployed to analyze the various techs. I have been concerned that many of the proposed fixes to restore balance just ratchet up the complexity. And I read in horror the article Jay linked to in a different thread (I forget where) that described the player who reverse engineered the various formulas and built an optimization engine in an excel spread to maximize ship build. As one of those players that values NP because it is “Diplomacy in Space”, I think the current level of complexity is already a little bit much.
I started this thread a month ago … so here’s a recent/current example illustrating the current unbalanced nature of tech and support my comment that at some point, everyone just focuses on Weapons, Manu, and Terra with the other tech become very secondary.
In the current team game (which was obviously won by the Ender’s weeks ago - now just a matter of time), their tech levels for W/M/T are in the 50-60’s (plus W & M are “expensive”) … while everything else is between 19-21 … and I’m guessing those are only that high due to Experimentation hits.
This is very typical for any type of mega-galaxy game.
I don’t know what the right/best solution is (wfmcgillicuddy makes a good point that you don’t want it to be too complicated) but there really should be some way of better scaling the other techs so they remain viable later into the game.
If you want to take money out of the end game, why not introduce an inefficiency tax as an empire grows? Sorry, I don’t mean to butt in, but that is how some other 4x space games have worked it, like Archspace. Though this does kind of defeat the point of the game, which is to take as many planets to win.
I love standardizing and symmetry, it brings peace to the OCD nature in me.
We are already limited in our decisions on buying economy, industry and science (EIS) by money; adding a second limit to me seems unnecessary.
Also, have you considered what will happen with limits when you capture a world that has existing EIS that brings your new total EIS over your limit? Do some of your industries just stop working?
The current technologies are a bonus, and can be totally ignored (or disabled with custom settings). As such, new players do not need to understand them fully to be able to play.
However, technology behaving as limits will drastically affect how the game is played (and cannot be elegantly disabled with custom settings). As such, new players will need to understand them in order to improve their EIS.
Note: you can also think of Scanning and Hyperspace as bonuses (instead of limits)
yeah, I have moved away from these limits. Current thinking is that these act more like Manufacturing and improve the effectiveness of your empires infrastructure.
Maybe the “trade route” idea could work if they were within Scanning? or Hyperspace Range? of another players Warp Gate. It encourages players to ally with their neighbours rather than those on the other side of the galaxy because of the risk of swifter betrayal. Ditto it could be a risky way to generate some extra money from an enemy who has a Warp Gate on their frontline.
