You’d still dismantle everything on every star which you lost to an enemy, given the choice. It’s better to pay a chunk of money to smash your infrastructure than have the enemy producing ships on your doorstep, after all! This, in turn, would lessen the incentive to attack and make people turtle up all game instead.
If you were going for this approach, you’d have to make the only option be building one piece of infrastructure over another- but even then, players would probably replace all their industry and science with economy when it looked like a star was about to fall.
To echo what I said above, I like the current functionality of Terra Forming (star resource additive) but am brainstorming for ways to fine tune … just like I think Banking needs a tune as suggested when I started this thread … but that one is “easy” with the progressive approach.
I agree there needs to be some way to keep plentiful stars “valuable” … since at high values of TF, there’s a lot of “sameness”
Nothing wrong with having seven techs (versus six) as this encourages different approaches to playing the game rather than one-size-fits-all.
Qwerty better summarizes what I was trying to say about “destroying” (one) infrastructure by using the word “modify” … which was exactly the intent. I.e. if you have a “TF cap”, you should have the ability to say “I want one less Econ and one more Science instead” … but yes, as Bill correctly points out, there could be unintended consequences.
“The only reason I didn’t jump right on it was that its still making things cheaper which is ultimately what I what I would like to fix.”
When considering design, what is the desired end goal?
For Techs, you want enough variety so that every tech has its purpose that these techs are generally “balanced.” However, you also want to maintain simplicity, especially for the effects of the individual techs.
For gameplay, you want to maintain differences between low and high resource stars. You also want to avoid Terraflation.
“Terra Plus Resources” reduces the relative differences between resources counts. 1 v 50 becomes 51 v 100 becomes 1001 v 1051. It’s simple, yes, but it has its own issues. The economically mindboggling “0 Credit Upgrades” and the late game “terraflation” are among them.
“Terra Cap” would create lots of complexity. Swapping, infrastructure destruction or conversion, managing caps… these are all complex topics and ideas. This complexity can add more decisions and strategies, but the concept itself removes decisions and strategies as well.
“Terra Minus Levels” as I suggested would make it simpler, prevent the main issues of Terraflation with the implementation of Level Zero, while remaining relevant. I agree that progression could still be an issue, but it does maintain differentiation.
So here’s some more ideas for the pot.
Star’s resource value creates the cap, Terraforming modifies this resource value.
Say a star’s investment cap is resources divided by 5. The Capital’s cap would then be 10 infrastructure at the start, and all stars gain +1 to their cap with each level of Terraforming.
1b) Of course, this can be simplified with making Terraforming give +1 Cap, and stars given a 10 level rating for their starting caps. Differentiation still decreases.
1c) What if Terraforming MULTIPLIES the cap? Say a star’s investment cap is resources divided by 10. Terraforming+1 multiplies this subtotal. So the Capital still starts with 10 cap, but level 2 gives it 15 cap, level 3 gives it 20 cap. This also maintains differentiation.
ASIDE: Minus Levels would also work for Tech Transfer Bonus, with the minimum level being 1. Those with high experimentation/banking can afford to send alot of tech.
Have a cap, but disallow infrastructure manipulation. You have to be careful how you use those slots! This directly punishes impulsive players.
Perhaps have both Terraforming and Extracting. Terraforming is about making the world more habitable, i.e. increasing the cap. Extracting is about making the world’s resources more available for exploitation i.e. decreasing the price somehow.
This is hard to balance, but what if you linked output directly to resource value? Science Facilities give Resource Value worth of tech a day? Manufacturing gives Resource Value*(Manufacturing+5) ships?
On Banking being underpowered: It is, and if you want it to be at all significant in the midgame (along with Experimentation) you have to buff the two of them somehow without overpowering them in the early game. Maybe you can give them additional abilities or progressiveness.
First: consider making Economy cost the same as Industry does now. Try to limit $10- credit upgrades and more $30+ ones. This makes economy more risky, as return on investment is not as guaranteed.
Right now there are 7 technologies.
SCANNING and HYPERSPACE are limited, early essential techs. They are needed most in the early part of the game to expand imperial capabilities and range. By the midgame, the only purpose for them are as tech sinks and for gimpy long range attacks. Their usefulness is limited absolutely by the size of the galaxy, and relatively by the speed of carriers and size of empires.
changes? Making Scanning more important in Dark Galaxies is a good idea, especially in those huge 64 player Dark Galaxies. If Terraforming is removed, I can see Hyperspace gaining importance in making Warp Gates cheaper.
BANKING and EXPERIMENTATION are unlimited, steady payout techs. Any player can gain as much of either as they want, and their payout is steady. They are very slightly unbalanced in the early game right after initial expansion, but then it is a long slow decline to uselessness due to scaling tech transfer costs while payout remains steady.
changes? Linking either or both to lowering tech payout costs is a good way to go.
WEAPONS is an unlimited, relative payout tech. It’s importance derives entirely on the importance placed upon it by other players. If no one researches it, there is no reason to research it other than to attack.
changes? Not really. See below.
MANUFACTURING is an unlimited, specific facility based payout tech. It’s importance, unlike literally every other tech, derives from the amount of industry the player owns. Manufacturing is clearly an oddball, compared to say, +Manufacturing ships on every star upon payday.
changes? For conciseness, changing it to the latter might be the way to go. That said, there’s no real reason to change this particular tech, as ship inflation is generally matched by ship inflation. Same with Weapons. Only tech transfer costs limit its unlimited potential.
TERRAFORMING is an unlimited, general facility development tech. It’s importance derives from building new facilities, not defending existing ones like Manufacturing. Also an oddball focusing on facilities instead of the big picture.
changes? This Thread.
So, what is the conclusion?
Should Techs be General, Facility Specific, or Both? If Both, should there be both General and Facility Specific techs for all aspects? What if there’s both Banking (General) and Trading (Increases Economy per facility)? What if there’s both Experimentation (General) and Innovation (Increases Science per facility)? What if there’s both Drafting (General) and Manufacturing (Increases ships per facility)?
Should Techs have Unlimited significance? (i.e. maintaining importance in the mid game and late game.) If so, techs like Scanning and Hyperspace need slowly ramping importance. Giving Hyperspace terraforming’s job of decreasing prices (at least for warp gates) is a stealth buff which pay off long after Hyperspace range itself is insignificant. Giving Scanning a 10% sized “Super Radar” which detects stealth means that the Scanning soft Limit could be 10 times larger as late game empires use more and more stealth carriers or infrastructure.
Should there be special techs or perks? Should they be purchased with money or research (or both?) This creates LOTS of complexity. However, say you need to reach 1440 research points for a Novabomb, which costs another 1000 credits to deploy the physical bomb. To get a second Novabomb, you need 2880 resarch points and 2000 credits. The first hit is free, but the cost ramps up like tech.
How to deal with inflation? Money supply goes up, cost goes down. Each individual item is them relatively less significant. Well, money supply will inevitably go up, but removing terraforming definitely prevents costs going down. Terraforming cap would slow down the increase of money supply. Adding perks and deployment fees would increases costs unable to be modified by terraforming.
P.S. In my paper and pencil conversion for a medieval strategy board game, I made all starting tech at 5 (sorta like Manufacturing being 5+Manu instead of Manu).
Took me a bit of thinking to figure out how you were doing it, but I LIKE the idea!!!
Not only because it can help with the Hyper-Inflation problem … but especially because it addresses the issue that (currently) at high TF, there’s a lot of “sameness” associated with “good” versus “bad” stars … as your charts clearly show.
I.e. a “good” star should stay more valuable than a “bad” star … and be worth fighting over!
If I were to add this feature, this is how I would do it. I agree that the ability to dismantle some things and rebuild others is kind of an advanced feature. I think it could be really interesting to know that I currently only have x slots throughout my entire galaxy, do I want to use them on Economy, Science or Industry. (Or Gates!)
Yeah, When I first designed the game the minimum Economy buy was 10 so that it needed to last at least a day, but on most stars 2-3 days before you would see a return on your investment. I would like to see a return to these kinds of numbers.
I actually really liked the game when there was just three techs. Range, Scanning and Weapons. The other techs were added to provide some more opportunities for social interaction. I think there is plenty of that at the moment which is why I’m not freaking out about losing a tech.
Social interaction is the primary reason for techs to exit in the game.
I do like what you are suggesting, standardise on General or Facility based. I think there is a nice symmetry or elegance of having all the techs more aligned. If I was going to take the step of bringing them all into line I would make them all gates or limit based.
Sor for example, Scanning and Range limit how far you can see and how far you can jump, I would make Banking, Experimentation and Manufacturing limit how much Economy, Science and Industry you could build throughout your empire. (Say 10 x Level max Economy for Banking, 5 x Level Max Industry for Mau, and 2 x Level Science for Experimentation)
I think unlocking the potential to grow is not as exciting as actually getting more cash each day, and it would be a hard sell for existing players, but I think new players would find this system quite simple and rewarding.
I’m not sure how it would feel to be hitting your Economy and Science limit all the time, but it might feel good to complete a research and have 10 new slots open up! It might be kind of nice to have money piling up and then all of the sudden spend it again because you achieved a new tech level. There could be some interesting decisions to make if you can buy more economy, but you would rather have industry, do you spend now or hold your cash until you can trade or research a new level of Manu?
Keep in mind that these changes would be played in games with the new scanning limited trade, so you might only have 2 or 3 trading partners. I would like it to be quite a hard decision whether to unlock more economy, science, industry, range, scanning or stick with good old weapons. The game is grow or die, but grow on what axis and when?
If we wanted more of these techs it could be easy to expand into other areas of the game. We could have a tech that limits the number of carriers you have. You can only operate 5 carriers for every level of Carrier Command tech for example. I like this because you’ll have to think more carefully about Carrier management.
Gate limits would be cool because we could have the additive speed gates (2x, 3x, 4x) but these cost more than just the cash. You have a total gate cap to think about.
I think these limit based techs will scale ok. You might find that you have heaps of cash but nothing to spend it on, but I think that just means you didn’t buy the correct ratio of economy to science. Of if your limits are no where near blocking you, that you should have spent more research time on weapons rather than unlocking economy and industry.
I think I would like to playtest this at some stage, I’ll have to have a think about how important these things are compared to other features folks are waiting for.
Please let me know what you think and if you would be willing to help me platest.
The thing with ratio is quite simple. To even more simplify it, let’s say that there are 6 Classes of Stars.
Class 1 = 10 NR - a shitty star
...
Class 5 = 50 NR - home star
Class 6 = 60 NR - I've heard legends about those..
Now the [size=19]main difference[/size] between old Terraforming and new Terraforming is,
that the old eventually levels all stars to a same quality,
whereas the new keeps the Class 5 star [size=19]FIVE TIMES BETTER[/size] than Class 1 as it was when the game started.
This is a simplified version. I will get back to it when I get home.
…it may not be actually 5 times. It was just a quick draft.
##the pictures
As for the pictures, they show the following stats for old terraforming and my suggestion. They show the values for Terraforming 4 and 20.
The first two show how much would the upgrade cost for first and tenth economy on a star with resources from 1 to 50.
The other two show how much economy would have been built on your stars if your cheapest upgrade was priced at $20 and $60.
This is an intriguing concept. Before I respond, a question: If you conquer built-up stars, and as a result your empire’s econ/ind/sci exceeds your limits, what happens? Conversely, if you lose built-up stars I imagine you keep the freed-up slots?
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.
