Hey all, Been thinking about the recent discussions about the amount of production growing expentially out of hand, and would like make a suggestion for it... How about that the population x infrastructe is taking the root of it? I made a quick and dirty spreadsheet with some numbers... Early game would be effected less then end game.. about a factor of four less total production early game vs a factor of ten late game....Perhaps a pass on all production costs is needed but that's probably in the to-do list anyway Your thoughts?
Sorry, I was in a bit of a rush last time I posted to you... plus fighting with my cat who loves to dance on the keyboard when I type...sigh. I Understand that population isn't the only factor involved in run-away growth, but it is possibly the biggest contributing factor. I like and appreciate what you did, truly, but I would like to see a solution that doesn't affect the early game at all, hence the reason why I'm focusing on caping population. I've been here a while now, and we've heard from time to time that the early game can be slow, obviously this is all up to the individual, both in perception and how the game is approached, but we must strive to keep as many players happy as possible in the end or we just diminish the market for the game. What you exposed was very helpful, what you propose as a solution also helpful, but if you can think of any way where the effects of any adjustments would only be felt in the mid to late game (especially the later), I think it would be ideal.
This is great stuff @Culthrasa, thanks a lot for putting the time. As others have said, the game is built around the POP x infra paradigm, and changing that now could work but would need a lot of adjustements to be made across the board. Also, a multiplier is much easier and simpler to grasp than a root. Analysing the data and graphs, it seems that we could try the following for starters: Increase infra upgrade costs, especially on the higher levels. Consider reducing the bonus of Civil and Aerospace engineering. Right now they boost +25%/50/100 at the top level, perhaps 15%/30/50 could work well). Re-evaluate the Deep Core Mine bonus (1 prod per pop instead of 2 could also work) Go with asteroid exploitation flat bonuses instead of % Reduce leader level up progression speed (labor skill) Subterraneum nerfed from +50% pop cap to +25% Large caves reduced from +50% pop cap to +25% To address the extreme case directly: Entertain the idea of adding a pop-pressure morale penalty if POPs go above a certain threshold, perhaps morale penalty would start at >50% POP capacity with -5%/-10.../-25% morale for 60%/70/80/90/100 cap, if. Now you could say: "Then what's the point of having >50% POPs?". POPs also give you ground combat strength, votes, taxes, RPs and SCPs. What do you think?
If you call it "overcrowding" or something it would fit.. Gives early game no penalties and takes away late game bonusses from having a tier III eco and such. I like it! In the meantime players probably won't feel penalized since they have tools they can employ and just see it as pre-req's for having a big colony. If you tailor it to take away most morale bonusses one can reliablably get end game (tier III eco, med-bay for starters) it prevents the morale bonus to production... A player would feel just as happy knowing he has a big planet with lots of pops and just a bit of positieve morale as one with 84% morale bonus
Catpaw gibberish... been there done that Yeh a solution which won't effect early game might be preferable, but the same can be solved with lowering early game costs. As Adam said a multiplier is easier to understand then a multiplier rooted, and it is a bit of a hack.. but one has to start somewhere right?
I do find that infra costs are already very high.... having over 100.000 cost is no exception.. i've had costs going up to 500.000 and more... I don't think that is the way to go... just accept that planets will have max infra late game and deal with that then trying to prevent it from happening... Civil/aero bonusses are quite strong and could be lowered.. however they also make for interesting gameplay since you can somewhat specialize planets, mostly shipyards.... take that away and every planet becomes more generic, doesn't feel like fun.... Flat astroid bonusses are probably fine... the robo factory already has a flat bonus so you are not introducing anything new to the game. What you could do for the core mining is split it up into two buildings.. again this is for specializing planets.. I really like the building cap in this game... More buildings all around would be great so people would have to chose more what a planet does... Like having 3 or 4 science buildings and 3 or 4 culture buildings would incentivise players to specialize.. coupled with some % bonusses to make it worthwhile... Reducing leader level up feels fixed.. everything levels up with 0.5 per level, so why shouldn't production? Again.. better to deal with the fact leaders are in the game and they give a bonus then prevent a player from having said bonus... reducing subterraneum/caves is probably fine too.. but it should lower in cost then too perhaps... just my two cents... hope it helps
On further reflection... this won't work in this form. you would need to adjust it. Right now the problem isn't reaching or approaching capacity on any colony, just on the colonies that have a population capacity over 20 or so. If you use the proposal as written, smaller worlds would cross the threshold faster, making them even less attractive than they are now. A tiny world would almost meet the threshold on initial colonization, a small one soon after. Homeworlds for most races would start at the threshold as well. Races that do not have the subterranean modifier would be penalized earlier than races that do. Think about this @Adam Solo is this what we want?
I'll add some thoughts on these when I can get to my desk. It's too much to type on my phone. Overall I like where you are going with these but have a few questions and suggestions.
You are right.. i didn't read it that way... I read it more like being over 20 pop gives penatly -XX%, being over 25 pop gives penalty YY% extra... That way only large planets would be effected at all, which bring small planet better in par... they are suffering from a number of issues which makes them useless except for placing a space station...
It's very important to keep in mind the impact of flat bonuses vs. per pop bonuses whenever balance changes are being considered. Flat Bonuses - Highly beneficial to new colonies. Not dependent on planet or pop size. Their impact decreases to a negligible value once colonies gain infrastructure and pops. They are similar to a support ship in that regard. Per Pop Bonuses - Minimal impact to new colonies. Dependent on planet and pop size to reach full potential. Impact increases to substantial value on colonies with established infrastructure and pops. Changing asteroid belts to flat bonuses means they are now a way to prop up new colonies rather than a way to boost established ones. This carries a few potential considerations: For it to be worth the effort to build outposts for asteroid production exploitation, the flat value would have to be a decent amount. If it isn't, people will just ignore them because the opportunity cost isn't there. It's better to do something else with the production queue, SSPs, and research queue. Chaining multiple asteroid belts to a new colony will cause new colonies to grow much faster than is currently possible. Since survey ship stacking has been brought up before, this is something to consider. Each new colony I create could instantly gain a lot of production if I route all my asteroids there. Deep core mine at 2 prod per pop isn't really overpowered compared to what strategic resources, anti-matter, etc. can do. I would move this tech deeper into the skill tree. It isn't really useful early game when you have very few pops on any of your planets. I would increase the cost to build and maintain deep core mines accordingly. Idea for additional penalty: Add a significant penalty to eco production when deep core mines are present on the planet. Kicking up all that dust doesn't help you reproduce via habitat control or improve the planet's climate. The goal is to make these less of a must have building. I support this idea if it primarily impacts the higher infrastructure levels when production is guaranteed to be getting pretty high on the colony. Each new infrastructure point increases production dramatically, both via the pop x infra formula AND the bonus infrastructure specialization choice (which can be substantial). No, I wouldn't do this. The increased leader salaries have made the leaders more expensive to maintain and they need to be powerful to warrant that. I don't like the idea of lowering both of these to 25%. I'd rather large caves benefit smaller worlds more than larger ones. I'd also rather see subterranean remain powerful. See below: I would support lowering the bonus to large caves. Perhaps you could just do a flat +2 pop cap for them regardless of planet size? They make more of a difference on smaller planets this way, but still act as another subspace vault like bonus on larger ones. EDIT: I would make this apply AFTER Subterranean too, so it isn't increased by it. So you'd increase pop cap by 50% for Subterranean, and THEN add +2 to that for the caves. I do not support reducing the subterranean bonus. In my eyes the issue is it is undercosted and too good for Custom/Sulak races. Subterranean is currently a very unique trait in that it allows a "tall" empire to be built. Reducing this bonus to 25% kills that off. I am a fan of abilities that offer extreme advantages or disadvantages as it creates more varied gameplay. We want to make gameplay more asymmetrical, not less. Instead, increase the cost of subterranean. Force players to sacrifice more by taking more negative point abilities if they want this and something else. Adjust Sulak so their points zero out by reducing one of their bonuses or giving them a worse penalty. The biggest issue is that the final point gives +50%. I commented on this in one of my videos, but taking infrastructure perks to level 3 is a complete no-brainer. Not only do you get empire wide perks, but you also get a % bonus that is twice as good as level 2. I don't think level 3 needs to give more % than level 1 and 2 do. It already unlocks the empire wide perk. How about 20%/40%/60% for those instead? As @Konstantine and @Culthrasa noted, implementing this in the wrong way will punish the wrong planets. If something like this is done, it must be done in a way that subterranean players and planets with large caves do not suffer additional penalties compared to a normal player or normal planet. I wouldn't want someone who picked a fun perk or found what they thought was a great planet to suffer. The penalty could be based on % pop capacity as @Adam Solo suggested, if they only applied to certain size worlds like large and huge worlds. Those colonies could be considered big cities where some citizens get upset about overcrowding. Smaller worlds could be considered small towns where citizens aren't complaining about issues like that. My gut reaction is there could be some unintended ripple effects from any sort of pop pressure which impact other things in the game. I'd have to look through all the impacted techs and skills to see what these might be though. I'd rather start with the other changes, personally.
I support this strongly This is a problem though, My homeworld is large with vaults, it caps at 18 population and I can get past 3000 production on the later stages of the game. There is nothing wrong with this. Base population by planet size is 4,8,12,16,20 Once you add enough modifiers to have population exceeding 20, and go over 30, the game breaks down. Titans in one turn, 10K production... this is out of control. Rather than doing this... Maybe it would be better to introduce some bureaucracy similar to 2056. It would only kick in on colonies exceeding 18-20 pop and increase accordingly the higher the population grows. It would be a reflection of the added administrative costs required in dealing with a population of that size. This would allow subterranean to stay largely intact, while addressing the problem more accurately where it is needed. Very nice, even 20% 40% 50% would work.
It sounds like the real issue is with large and huge worlds. Pop cap based on % gets too extreme for those worlds. What about making subterranean a flat bonus that scales worse with larger worlds? We can still achieve 25% on the largest worlds. +2 tiny (6 cap) = 50% +4 small (12 cap) = 50% +4 medium (16 cap) = 33% +4 large (20 cap) = 25% +5 huge (25 cap) = 25% This combined with a flat +2 pop per large cave could satisfy everyone. Max pop count would be 29 on a huge world with all bonuses including large caves. Large would cap at 24 all-in with caves, and medium at 20 (18 without caves). Huge worlds should remain powerhouses as should Subterranean in my opinion. Make usuable ones less common if need be. Also increase the cost of subterranean and large homeworld custom traits if need be.
It's a plausible approach and one worth investigating further. On the one hand I do acknowledge that most huge worlds should be powerhouses, on the other I fear that 29 max pop would cross the threshold for run-away growth. Still, it is much better than pop approaching 40. I'm inclined to support your approach, in my opinion it has a lot of merit. Numbers would come down and it would be fairly easy to implement which is is always a good thing. Numbers can always be tweaked further if needed, for what it's worth, count me in.
What about making it linear instead? if this isn't palatable to Adam 1.2.3.4.5 If you go Subterranean a huge world goes to 25. Caves could be a flat 2, plus another 2 if the player selects to research vaults. Maximum then would be 29 just as you have it above, hopefully that wont happen too often though.
Linear is a flat 25% across all sizes, which I said earlier I don't feel is enough. The point of a subterranean race is that they should be able to build tall. Not everyone wants to have to conquer and manage a large expansionist empire. As medium and smaller planets are far more common, and large caves are quite rare, I prefer a larger bonus for tiny, small, and medium to allow a tall player to have an easier time if there are no suitable large or huge planets nearby. Realistically, large caves isn't going to line up on large or huge often. We are already reducing the benefit of those from 10 pop on huge to 2 as proposed, which makes their presence far less swingy. 27 is the realistic max, if you find a decent huge world (not a guarantee), and if you take subterranean. While caves are too much of a lucky power swing now, subterranean is something you plan from the start. I'd rather see it cost more customization points if still overpowered as I proposed. Remember choosing subterranean means you are not choosing something else, or you are loading up on negative traits.
We've got to take a serious look at some of these things, look below, even this is too much. Notice Sofiela, If I had found her earlier or even focused there with support ships, leaders and exploitations... I did this just to goof off, It's 2 turns for a high tech Titan at my HW... this just doesn't seem like much fun to me. As Adam suggested at another thread, some house rules would work till the AI gets at 100%, though I think numbers still need to be adjusted regardless.
Population, Infrastructure, Asteroid exploitations, leader influence, cultural achievements, strategic resources Roughly in that order is my guess. Hold on, Here is the save, you can take a quick glance if you have the time. I know this is not as easy as it looks, The early game is paced well, but certain combinations of factors and player choices can quickly throw it out of whack, some precision surgery may be required.
I'll take a guess it's the asteroid exploitations as the biggest offender, considering infra and pops as the "normal" resources of a colony. We know too many pops and infra causes an imbalance at the moment. That will be addressed. I'll take a look at the save for the details though. \Edit: Ok, it was a combination of factors. The biggest is the asteroid production exploitations. Without them you would pass from 7K to 4.3K productuion alone. Then, it's way too much morale. Wan is probably too good. So, a few things combined plus the asteroid production. Let me see what we can do.
