Implementing player suggestions

The limits and the possibilities

Published on March 11, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

I've been reading a lot of discussion both here and on other sites about ideas and suggestions players have for Galactic Civilizations II. Stardock, I like to think, is reasonably well known for implementing pretty significant changes into its software well after release. If we think something is a really good idea and it won't dramatically change the product, we'll seriously consider implementing it. We've been doing that since the first software products we released over 10 years ago.

Of course, the question is, what constitutes a change that is too dramatic? And how can we determine whether a given idea is something that's good for the game or not?

Before we start out there, I should make a clarification on something. I've seen threads where people will say "Yea, but Brad says it's working as designed so he obviously thinks it's great." That's not what I mean when I say that. The context is important.

As an engineer, I try to be precise as I can be with my words. That's one of the reasons I'm so wordy. What I write tends to be full of qualifications. One of the things I tend to object to strongly is when someone will take a design choice they disagree with and simply label it as a "bug". A bug, to me, is something that is not working as designed. Someone may not like a given feature, but if it's working as it's supposed to, it's not a bug. But that doesn't mean that we think it's the end-all be all feature.

One of the areas I want to tackle in the post release is the economic system of Galactic Civilizations II. But I don't want to do it alone. I want to hear what other people think too. But such discussions can be problematic. As with any on-line discussion, disagreements will break out. With people all around the world, many with strong opinions, you inevitably end up with some people who will state their opinions as facts. "This is how game X did it. Do it like that." There is no single "best" solution. We all have our own ideas. What we can do, however, is build a consensus to some degree.

Economic Systems & Strategy Games

Some parts of the game I feel strongly about, other areas are open to significant change.

For example, in Galactic Civilizations II as leader of your civilization you can set your tax rate -- the money coming in from your people. And you can set your "spend rate" which determines what % of your industrial/research capacity to make use of. I believe that governments should be able to intentionally have deficit spending. I believe that your financial income should not be tied to your industrial capacity. If you have the factories and labs to do it, you should be able to make full use of them regardless of your income. It's called deficit spending and it's practiced by many governments. Your population will get angry if you go too far into debt. And right now, we have a -$500 debt ceiling.

Having taxation and spending separate is something I'm married to. I like it. I realize it's more complex than in some other games but of the other systems we've contemplated over the years, I think it provides the best balance between realism and simplicity. People are free to disagree of course. That's natural. Some % of people will not like it. But I think most people understand it.

So let's talk about the part of the system I'm not married to -- the UI representation of it.

So you have your spend rate -- the % of your industrial capacity that you want to make use of. Then the question is, where do you want that industrial capacity to go? There are 3 sliders that control how that spending is funneled. The three sliders allow you to decide how much to fund your factories and research labs. Military and social spending goes into your factories which produce more planetary improvements and build your ships. Research spending goes to your labs and is converted to research points that go to getting your next tech.

I don't think it's that complicated and judging from the various forums I read, most people understand how it works. But not everyone. Some people don't understand it and others just don't like it. The group that doesn't understand it tend to be the same people who don't understand why taxation and spending aren't linked because "game X does that". Part of the reason I put in having taxes and spending be separate was out of frustration with other strategy games that tried to act like ones money income was somehow tied to their industrial production. As if the Germans in World War II could simply have bought more armies with money (yea, I know you can quick build but it comes as a very steep price -- on purpose). Industrial capacity has nothing to do with wealth. Hence the division.

Rhetoric

I confess, I get defensive in response to rhetoric. I tend to have an aversion to absolutes or people giving their opinions as facts. Every game that has an economic system is going to have people who think they have a better idea on how to do it. We obviously like our system. We think it works pretty well and we think most players think it's fine too. But that doesn't stop us from trying to listen and make improvements to make it even better. But when some player asserts something is "broken" that makes it sound like it's a bug and then puts us in the position of having to defend our design decision.

Every element of the game is a choice. Why only 5 planets in a solar system? Why not 9? Why do we allow millions of people to come into the tax system in a given week? There's so many design choices that have to be made but at the end of the day, our goal is to make the game fun. But one man's fun is another man's headache. I've gotten emails from people who simply can't play the game as long as Earth and Jupiter are on the map in the wrong scale (Earth is much smaller than Jupiter in real life but we try to scale things so that they're usable on screen). Heck, I should post some of the emails I get, you'd be shocked at some of the stuff. I got one today from someone who claimed they were returning the game because all the alien races are humanoid. I kid you not. Hey, at least they're not all humans with different nose ridges!

Rhetoric matters. When someone comes onto the forum and makes a post entitled something like "Map system totally broken" and it turns out it's because we use squares instead of hexes or because the moon rotates around the earth in clockwise or whatever it puts us on the defensive. I think that's just human nature. I realize some people find it tempting to say "Everyone with half a brain knows that the moon rotates counter-clockwise around the earth!11!1" But when you're on the receiving end and you know pretty certain that 99.9% of people don't care which way the moon is rotating because it's just a cool graphics effect, it's hard to champion changing it (incidentally, we are going to tweak that since it's in the customplanets.xml file).

Other Economic options

I have some ideas on economic tweaks that I could see us making.

For example: Social Production. Social Production could be automatically transferred to ship building when all planetary improvements are done. This would solve the potential issue of people's economy becoming crazy when all social projects are completed. And if there's no ship to be built, it would just go back to your treasury. It wouldn't be hard to do, would only require modest AI changes. I can assure you the AI would love it.

Another area I could see tweaked is the relationship between research labs and factories. Right now, spending is rationed between factories and labs. But that's not the only way it could be done. Other ways would require some UI thought though to keep it from being too complex.

For example, rather than having a spending slider, you would simply have an industrial slider and a research slider that would be independent of each other. Then you'd have a dial that would let you decide how much of that industrial output was going to planet improvements and how much to ship building. But doing it in an intuitive way would take some thought.

There are many other ways it could be done too. All would require thought on how best to present it so that it's intuitive to players and doesn't radically change the game.

Conclusions

It's always tough trying to know where to draw the line on improvements. Game developers want to satisfy their gamers -- all of them. And often times, great ideas come from players. The whole starbase concept in Galactic Civilizations came from players for instance.

But you also have to take into account the people want to feel like they're playing on solid ground. That the game they're playing isn't that fluid. Because every change one makes is going to disappoint someone. So we have to be very careful about how we do things.

That's my 2 cents on that anyway.

Comments (Page 5)

SmackleFunky

on Mar 12, 2006

Your Civilization capital generates 24 manufacturing points and 24 technology points, 10 units of food and provides a 25% morale bonuse and a 25% influence bonus.

Therefore: Going from the first screen where our spend rate was 50% and I have 33% of each category funded I would get:

Manufacturing: 24mp X 50% X 33% = 4 military spending and 4 social spending

Research: 24tp X 50% X 33% = 4 research spending.

Frogboy, Thanks for your example, that clears a few things up for me. But there is still one thing that I don't understand that I hope you or someone else can clear up for me.

Lets say that I put my spend rate at 100%, because I want my total industrial capacity to be 100% of what I am capable of. Then buy your formula I do:

Manufacturing: 24mp X 100% X 33% = 8 military spending and 8 social spending

Research: 24tp X 100% X 33% = 8 research spending.

So now I am using 16 military points and 8 research points. But wait, I have 24 manufacturing points and 24 technology points. How can I set the sliders so that I use all 24 manufacturing points and 24 technology points all at once? I suggested a system earlier that would do this, but I can't figure out how you could do this with the current system. Unless it is by design that spending more on manufacturing is going to decrease research, I don't see any way to fully utilize my buildings.

I have nothing wrong with the current system. If it is meant to be that it is impossible to fully utilise all your buildings (unless you put research or military/social to 100% and the other to 0), then ok its by design. I don't agree with it but I can live with it. But if you are meant to be able to use all your resources, then I would like to know how

iThog

on Mar 12, 2006

The problem would be in documenting something like that. That's the problem we already have -- we have the realism camp vs. the people who want every number clearly displayed vs. the people who don't want the game to look like a spread sheet.

Good luck with that

if you ask 3 people that question 3 different ways you'll likely get 9 answers.

From my (admitedly limited) experience with GalCiv the players must be able to consider a rather large body of information. The game would lose something if all the computations were up front and definable in hard terms (fuzzy math rewards intuitive play) and people like the variable reinforcement of guessing right
(There are so many variables in GalCiv that a good player can can either spend their time crunching #s (not fun for most people) or feel their way through ( 20 minutes with the sliders gave me enough info to play.))

a quick blurb about the gist of the sliders and how they relate to production et all is enough. If people want to get into how it all works, it is afterall determinable and for the most part repeatable. Don't underestimate the value of your customers getting that "Eurika moment" where they start to "get" the mechanics.

On debit/deficit spending Personally I like the idea of being able to lose a game by making bad financial decisions.

As for "how many patches is the right amount" wait until you have a few things that you think are really cool/necessary every three to six weeks would be beyond my personal expectations (in a good way).

good luck

Frogboy

on Mar 12, 2006

So now I am using 16 military points and 8 research points. But wait, I have 24 manufacturing points and 24 technology points. How can I set the sliders so that I use all 24 manufacturing points and 24 technology points all at once? I suggested a system earlier that would do this, but I can't figure out how you could do this with the current system. Unless it is by design that spending more on manufacturing is going to decrease research, I don't see any way to fully utilize my buildings.

This is a weakness in the current system. Because as a practical matter, you can't utilitize 100% of your research and industrial base.

One of the suggestions that we are looking seroiusly at is at some point, maybe in an expansion pack (certainly in a sequel) would be to have manufacturing and research be decoupled.

Alfonse

on Mar 12, 2006

Yes but there are totally hardcoded. They could literally be implemented as an IF THEN statement.

You're not, for instance, doing things that are going to build up these values.

Note: I'm going to compare GalCiv2 to other games. The reason for this comparison is not to say, "Do exactly what they do," but to compare and contrast the results of the various different design decisions.

Perhaps there is some wisdom in that, then.

One of the reasons why the internal formulae are so complex in GalCiv is because lots of different things feed into the resources, and properly balancing all of that requires the creation of arcane functions. By limitting the different possibilities that can be fed into a particular resource, it means that the functions can be very simple and still be balanced.

In Civ, a city only gets a few possible bonuses to any of its resources. Take production, for example. You can build factories, power plants, and a very few other things to help out. It is much easier to control the bonuses and curtail potential exploits in this system, thus allowing the formulas themselves to be fairly simplistic.

In GalCiv, because you can build any number of any kind of building, your tweaking becomes quite a bit more difficult. You have to make the formula more complicated to allow for more possibilities of tweaking to avoid exploits.

Perhaps in future games, if the lucidity of the results of a player's actions is of some importance to you, you will consider this wisdom in the totality of the game's design. Perhaps the idea of building multiple of these kinds of buildings wasn't the best idea, and in GC3 you would choose an alternative that allows for tweaking while still allowing for a simpler system that is more lucid.

Ultimately, the design question is this: in order to be a good GalCiv player, should the player need to actually know the consequences of his actions, or can the player get by with some ad-hoc guessing?

GC2, as it currently stands, isn't entirely clear on this matter.

On the one hand, picking which technology to research tells you exactly what you're going to get. By contrast, Alpha Centauri (by default. It can be changed) obfuscates this intensionally, allowing you to set which kind of tech you would like to focus on. It means that you can't simply say, "Oh, I need *this* tech, I should go research the stuff that it needs." Instead, you set priorities for how you intend to play through the game, and then you get various technologies of interest along the way.

Because GalCiv2 works under the standard Civ technology methadology, as opposed to the Alpha Centauri method, the user has a great deal of information about which techs one should and should not research to get various buildings, ship parts, etc. The results of researching a technology is immediately known to the user before actually doing the research.

However, the results of building a factory, for example, are not known. Unless the player is actively looking at the city the turn before and the turn after the factory gets built, the player only has a vague understanding of how much more production the city received. By contrast, in Civ, you know exactly what a factory is going to give you: 50% more production than you would have had without it.

It is this vagueness of planetary improvements (and starbase improvements) that is strange. One part of the game, research, tells you exactly what you can expect. Another part of the game, planetary improvements, requires ad-hoc "reasoning" (which isn't so much reasoning as just kind of "try some stuff and see what happens"). Basically, you have two parts of the same game that are designed under entirely different design principles. And this is a source of tension.

Now, granted, because of the design decision of weapon attacks vs. defenses, you couldn't have technology work under the fuzzy logic system of Alpha Centauri. However, it is very strange that you have two systems in the same game that operate on entirely separate design principles.

On your first playthrough of any strategy game, you don't really know what the right move is. For example, in Civ, there are sometimes cities that don't actually "deserve" some of the higher-end buildings like banks or stock exchanges. The cost of the building's upkeep exceeds the money that they provide. In the late game, building new cities doesn't mean just building all the buildings for them. You build the buildings only when the city will profit from them. A neophyte doesn't have their head wrapped around the system well enough to make this possible.

Ultimately, GalCiv2 creates this, but the player can never really leave the neophyte stage. The player never really knows if the population of the planet warrents 4 income buildings or 3. Is it better to build 3 farms and 2 trade buildings, or 2 farms and 3 trade buildings? The questions, posed in GC2 concepts, have no answer because the player doesn't have enough information to answer them.

For me, personally, I derive quite a bit of enjoyment in leaving the neophyte stage and learning what the right decisions are. The problem with GC2 is that the only way to do this is to experiment for a very long time. The player must play live games involving these various combinations in order to determine what works and what doesn't. Whereas in Civ, all it requires is spending some quality time with the Civilopedia. You can determine good build strategies in Civ a priori, whereas you need a posteriori knowledge in GC2. As it currently stands.

So, the question still stands. Does the player have to master the system in order to be successful in the game, or is unoptomized play sufficient to be successful in the game?

Also, as a last point, it would be prudent to point out that if the answer is the latter, then your game is not well suited to multiplayer gaming. A good multiplayer game must make the results of each decision absolutely clear to the player before making them, so that a player can quickly respond to a wily and dangerous opponent. I know I'd hate to lose a multiplayer game not because of strategy, but because I overestimated the number of factories that I needed to build, and therefore I had less money to spend, forcing me to raise taxes, which lowered my approval slightly, which made it easier for him to bloodlessly conquere my cities.

ben_sphynx

on Mar 12, 2006

Persoanaly I would find the system to make more sense, if the different categories were labled differently.

My initial thoughts would be that industrial capacity is not a good name for something that includes research efficiency.
It might be better labled 'efficency', or have the research unlinked with the industrial spending.

Also, having the three sliders linked so that they all add to 100% sugests that they are distributing a budget.
In the example (post #55 by Frogboy), they were - but this only worked, because the planets industry points equaled its research points. Thus it gave 33% of 24 industry points at 50% efficency (24*.33*.5=4) in two categories, plus 33% of 24 research points at 50% efficency (also 4), meant that the total spend was 12, of which 33% was social, 33% was military and 33% was research.
If one had only had 12 research capacity, though, one would have ended with 4 social, 4 military, and 2 research.
This is no longer in the 33%:33%:33% ratio, and is thus less intuative.

I would like to see it woking with a budget system:
Industrial capacity replaced with a budget value - some quantity of bc (compared to the total industrial and research capacity - different planets would get a proportion of this budget in proportion to their total capacities).
Eg, if you only had one planet, with 24 industry points, and 12 research points, you would have a slider that slides from 0->36 bc
If you had a second planet with 8 and 8, the slider would go from 0->(36+16=)52; the first planet would get 36/52 of the budget, and the second would get 16/52 of the total budget.

One could then have three sliders for social/military/research, capped at 100% total.
These determine the budget for each category, as a % of total budget.
Eg, with the 24 industry points/12 research points planet, you could have 33% in each category; with the budget set at 18 that would be 6 points in each; with budget at 36, it would be at 12 points each.
Similarly, if one had 24 industry and 24 research, setting all 3 at 33%, budget at 36, it would still be 12 points in each; the extra research capacity is not relevant (except in determining the planets share of the overall budget).
This would allow the possibility of a planet being assigened more to one categy than it can use:
Eg with 32 industry points, 8 research points, 33% in each spending plan, and a budget of 36, there would be an attempt to spend 12 bc in research with only 8 research points.
This could be handled by either 1: allowing overspending at a reduced efficency; one might get 9 points of overall research from your 12 spending; or 2: returning the excess funds to the treasury; or 3: redirecting the excess funds to other categories on that planet; or 4: wasting the excess funds.

Alternativly one could use a system not based at all on a budget-like system.
I would not mind seeing (as I believe others have sugested earlier in the thread):
Industrial Capacity slider only determines the efficency of industrial points.
Social and Military spending sliders, adding to 100% between them (and not linked to research).
[So it would still use "social production=industrial points * social slider% * Industrial capacity %", with the same for military production.]
Research slider % would determine reserach only, and would not be linked to industry (as it does not use factories).
[So reserch generated = research points * reserach slider %]

This might require some rebalanceing of the number of reserch points and industry points produced on planets, as it will otherwise allow one to use them more efficently.

I do believe that it will make things more intuative, however.

One thing that has been sugested that I dont like is allowing unused social % to be used as military % instead.
This might lead to the boring tactic of setting social to 100%, and only building ships when the planet has fully built up its infrastructure.
While I dont like the current social wastage when there is nothing to produce, I would prefer to see the planet doing something else with the extra social production - a possible example would be to allow it to build up extra influence (statues in the parks, fancy architectual buildings, etc); this would represent goverment with too many funds trying to build up their tourism and culture. Having the benefits on a deminishing returns scale (eg 1 bc for the first point, 2 for the second, 3 for the 3rd, or something similar), might stop it being too strong.

lwarmonger

on Mar 12, 2006

I concur with the gentleman above who said that our debt limit should be based off of a multiple of our tax income, with the added caveat that it not be based off of revenue but off of the tax base (the amount of money one would get if the tax slider was moved to 100%). This would keep it both stable, and add realism to the degree to which you can go into debt given the size of ones' economy.

Paladin Solo

on Mar 12, 2006

I think the only thing I don't like about this game is having to go with a bare minimum of 1 million troops needed for a planetary invasion, or 1 million citizens for colonization. Sometimes, I'd rather send in a few hundred thousand, or ten thousand, or even less. Can this be modded?

Veinless

on Mar 12, 2006

A big Thank You to Frogboy for always keeping an open mind, for not taking constructive criticism personally, and for inviting dialog on game mechanics.

I applaud the current move regarding social and military production. I think it is a step in the right direction. Was the previous way "wrong"? No, but nothing exists that cannot be improved.

I look forward to the future delinking of industry and research. These is no reason that research cannot be independant of industry. Likewise, I cannot find a game-improving reason to change reearch from empire-wide to a planet-by-planet basis. My recommendation would be to leave the research slider alone, just decouple it from the industry sliders. Ultimate reasoning: The product of research affects the whole empire at once. The product of social/military spending is of a local nature.

So how do we satisfactorily implement a system for management of colony industry? This requires some thought.
Firstly, we must address budgeting. Do all colonies get a budget set at the empire economy management screen? This would be the "Spend xxx% of industry capacity" slider that currently exists. I do not think there is anything wrong with this approach, keeping in mind the new changes regarding social waste.

Secondly, I believe we must address the act of balancing social vs. military spending. There are 4 states of production which must be examined.
State 1: No social projects, no military projects. This one is easy: anything allocated in the budget towards industry returns to the treasury. I do see an opportunity here for creativity. Perhaps idle factories should have a larger maintanance cost. After all the factories do not just lock the doors and shut off the lights. This would make it slightly more costly to have a planet with a great number of factories when the work runs out.
State 2: No social projects, military project. 100% of industry spending is directed towards military project.
State 3: Social project, no military projects. 100% of industry spending is directed towards social project.
State 4: Both social and military projects. When this state exists, I see the neccesity of another slider. This slider would exist at the colony level, or anywhere else where both social and military projects can be scheduled.

I would make the stops of the slider be such that:
-All the way to the left: Put social project on hold. Put military project at 100% of budget*.
-All the way to the right: Put military project on hold. Put social project at 100% of budget*..

So what do we put in between? I would suggest the stops be based on the number of turns to complete the military project. We may be able to make this selectable (that is, make the stops based on the number of turns to complete either the social or military project, as decided by the player). Wait, don't go away yet. *If all the way to the left means military project gets 100% of budget, then calculate how many turns the military project will take to complete at 100%. Use the strength of the tool (the PC). If it takes 3 turns at 100% spending, then have the UI automatically calculate the minimum spending required to complete the military project in 3 turns. Allocate the rest to social spending.

So what do we put in between?

I would suggest the next stop, in this example, be to complete the military project in 4 turns. Let the UI calculate the division of spending and allocate the minimum required funds to complete the military project in the selected time.

This slider does not govern money. Money is governed at the empire level. This slider governs the focus of spending & time, all in one. If done properly, it can simplify colony management.

OK. Enough novel writing. I feel like I am at work, when I really really want to be at play. By looking at the dates of latest.zip I do not think I have the build with the most recent changes to social spending. I await eagerly.

Bezuhov

on Mar 13, 2006

"What I do feel strongly about is that if we're going to work with users on making the game even better, we don't want to be treated as servants."

As long as you're not writing freeware, you don't have much choice in the matter. I earned that $45 by serving others, and if you'd like my next $45 and the $45 of the people I'll tell about this game, you'd do well to adjust the attitude. You're not exactly a monopoly provider.

Thanks for taking the time to explicate your system. Here's an easy fix.

The breakdown slider appears to be some kind of nostalgia holdover from MOO, is entirely superfluous, and takes too much control out of the player's hands, for little reason.

Replace the spending and breakdown sliders with three spending sliders: one for mil, one for social, one for research. If you want to go 100% on each, knock yourself out (and likely go bankrupt quickly). This would greatly increased transparency and clarity (making the game much easier to pick up, and thus less likely to be dropped quickly like a MOO3 hot potato), while also giving the player greater control.

Peace Phoenix

on Mar 13, 2006

The breakdown slider appears to be some kind of nostalgia holdover from MOO, is entirely superfluous, and takes too much control out of the player's hands, for little reason.

Well, I think that there is 2 things wrong with this statement:
- the first version of GalCiv, for OS2 was available before MOO, unless I am mistaken
- the sliders were already here in GC 1 for widows. And they made sense at this time since every building would give you % bonus.

So my guess is that every people involved in the developpement of GC2 (developpers and beta testers) didn't see how the new building system would change how spending would be perceived by people new to GC.

jpf190279

on Mar 13, 2006

I really don't want to get into a flame war here but I feel I must point out a few things regarding the economic system, now personally I have not a problem with it what so ever well until I read this thread.

1. 24MP x 50% x 33% is indeed 4MPs.

But this is my problem you see.... I have 24MPs so why am I using only 4 of them? Thats because I haven't allocated the spending. Ok thats fair enough but wait there is another problem with that.... Why would I build anything over 4MPs if I can only use 4MPs? Well because in order to use one third of one half of 24MPs of factories I have to have an excess ability of 20MPs???? WHAT!!!! So if I want only 2MPs I need to build 12MPs of factory?

So if that is true then while I have a balanced economic of 34%/33%/33% and an industrial cap of 50% I will need 6x my desired MPs to meet my needs, so if I need 4MPs and I have 6x4MP factories I'm only using one? In the real world that would be considered an unacceptable waste of resources, and I see no difference here.

I can't for the life of me see any reason in the universe that I can't use all 100% of MPs both Social and Military and 100% research. And if research is different from MPs and industry then why can't I have 100% research instead of having 33% of 50% ind cap of research. This I am afraid makes no sense, yes it makes sense mathematically but not in a simulated universe sense, if a national economy was run like this, well they'd be in poo street very quickly.

It would also be nice to see Research Point costs ans generations. If x tech takes x turns I'd like to know how many RPs I am generating and how many I am required to produce for x tech. I also don't see why I should be limited to one tech research field at a time. Surely an entire galactic civilization isn't going to work on just one project at a turn that seems a bit odd doesn't it.

Now before I get flamed to death for states any of this, I'd like to point out that it is just my observations, we would all like to change this game to make it our dream game but unfortunately thats just not going to happen. I accept what the devs have produced I can see they are getting pee'd with what people are saying. In fact I don't know why I m writing this messge now if I know they aren't going to alter the game. Hmmm I'm all confused now.... LOL!

Errr ok back to reality from my surreal moment, point I'm trying to make is that we should all accept the game for all its good points and its bad points, if you don't like the bad points then list them but don't expect the devs to write you you're version of GalCiv2 thats just silly. But and only but, if you spot a possible needed or vital improvement then by all means make the comment.

Anyway need a break...

Frogboy chill

Spearthrower

on Mar 13, 2006

As long as you're not writing freeware, you don't have much choice in the matter. I earned that $45 by serving others, and if you'd like my next $45 and the $45 of the people I'll tell about this game, you'd do well to adjust the attitude. You're not exactly a monopoly provider.

Did you take a course in being obnoxiously rude, or does it come naturally?

You know with 95% of developers you wouldn't even be having that opportunity to be such a twat? They wouldn't be listening to you anyway, certainly not responding and wouldn't give a rats ass even if they heard. Give a margin of respect at least when you are in communication. All business works like this... or does your boss treat you like a serf?

Oh and by the way, you hardly have the monopoly on $45's.... there are plenty of other "investors" here who hold a share.

To the point.

I really like what I am hearing. One of the core elements of the game that I dont like (but can easily put up with) is a) Wasted manufacturing.

Not being able to maintain a 100% Research rate and 100% Manufacturing rate.

As you said Brad, you want players to be able to defecit spend. I want to be able to defecit spend. I want to sink my money into research.... it should cost and cost heavily. I definitely definitely definitely agree with non-linking of income and spending. It took me about 2 games to clock onto that (having not played GC1, not having read the manuals and having played infinite games in the past where the 2 are linked). If you do go the route of allocating leftover social production going into military and leftover military going into the treasury.... I think you need to break Research off from that pack just to ensure that there is a money sink. You may even need to add further money sinks into the game or the treasury could grow too rapidly.

I am looking forward to seeing this game evolve and being a minor part of the process. Cheers to everyone for writing up their (polite and constructive) ideas to help improve the game and to ensure that Stardock employees get some time for themselves.... just a little mind you!

jpf190279

on Mar 13, 2006

Cheers LOL!

J

Camp Freddie

on Mar 13, 2006

Posted by Frogboy:

This is a weakness in the current system. Because as a practical matter, you can't utilitize 100% of your research and industrial base.
One of the suggestions that we are looking seroiusly at is at some point, maybe in an expansion pack (certainly in a sequel) would be to have manufacturing and research be decoupled.

Posted by someone else:

Taxes ====|========= 30%

Spending (Industrial Capacity)
Production Rate =======|====== 50%
Research Rate ===========|== 80%

Production Distribution Military ==|======== Social

The above solution would be great, but it'd require a hell of a lot of rebalancing to get it into GC2. Being able to run research and indutry at 100% capacity rather than being forced to balance them would make lab and factory capacity much less important.
At the moment I need over 50% of my budget in industry, so my effective research capacity will be <50% of total capacity even at 100% spending. This means I need to build plenty of factories and labs.
If I could run at 100% industrial AND reseach capacity, regardless of my industrial spend, I'd only need half the number of labs and factories to get the same output. This would be a better system (in my opinion), but it would need the research, industry and economy calculations to be massively rebalanced.
Please decouple the factors in the next game though (or maybe an expansion pack).

For GC2, I'd like the social spending to be redirected.
It'll cause some budget issues due to upgrades on non-military worlds, but it shouldn't be too bad.

I think some of those upgrade costs need rebalancing anyway! Spending 200 per research centre (cost 100, capacity 12) to upgrade them to academies (cost 300, capacity 14) is a bit steep for a 2 capacity increase (thats triple the cost for a <20% increase). Especially since my research worlds are unlikely to have much industrial capacity and thus take forever to upgrade.

jpf190279

on Mar 13, 2006

To the point.

I really like what I am hearing. One of the core elements of the game that I dont like (but can easily put up with) is a) Wasted manufacturing.

I soooooooo completely agree with you mate, you are so agreeing with my observations, having waste factories and research facilities doing jack all is very concerning, HOWEVER, one thing I am now worried about is a paradyme shift in viewing economy within the game. First by delinking the RPs and MPs from each other you are essentially hypering up the overall power of both of these. Instead of having 34% Mil 33% Soc and 33% Res you are now going to have 50% Mil 50% Soc and 100% Res based off an optimal 100% Ind Cap. Thats going to increase production and research a BLOODY lot.

For example under the current scheme;

50% Ind Cap

Maximum 24MP / 24RP

Settings at 34%/33%/33%

Thats 4 Mil / 4 Soc / 4 Res

Under your purposed change it would be;

50% Ind Cap

Maximum 24MP / 24RP

Settings at 50%/50%/100%

Thats 6 Mil / 6 Soc / 24 Res

You immediately notice the massive jump in the RP category, now this is more than the Mil and Soc for a reason, they are 50% of 50% of 24MPs which is 6MPs, but RP is not based off of Ind Cap so the inital 50% cap doesn't apply so if you set the research individually to the Ind and MPs without taking them into consideration it alters the output value massively.

Ok lets use another example;

50% Ind Cap

Maximum 24MP / 24RP

Settings at (50%/50%)Ind Cap 33% RP

Ok what we are doing here is setting the MPs to 50% each of maximum allow Ind Cap which is 50% so basically its REALLY only 25% and Research is set to its original 33% without Ind Cap.

Thats 6 Mil / 6 Soc / 8 Res

Still you see the an advantage to the RP output even at the original levels.

Now of course this is all based off of the idea that you can link the Soc and Mil Tax settings together and make Res independant. I agree with the linked production idea but you should be careful in regards to the Research settings. Idealy a new slider should be created one that represents the OVERALL research tax allocation independant of ind cap... This makes more sense than grouping it with MP producers. Also I see no reason whatsoever then for a ind cap slider....

So really ironically you should have 4 and for only sliders in economy, one for tax level, and 3 for tax spending in Mil Soc and Res. The idea that you need a throttle called Ind Cap is just silly, if you want to produce less reduce one of the MP sliders Mil or Soc not the overall Ind Cap. Surely there is time when one might what maximum ind cap on Mil and 50% on Soc. Under the current system the Ind Cap limits both.

Sorry SD after thinking about this a bit I really think this may need further debating. But I can live with the current system only because everyone is governed under it.

J

My conclusion

4 spending sliders system with linked Mil / Soc / Res and a overall Ind Cap slider just boggles the mind.

A 3 slider system with only Mil and Soc sliders linked and a separate Res slider with NO ind cap slider makes more sense.

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