Proportions and Facilities
 

As much as I am in love with the Proportions, I hate the way facilities are handled in it.

Just think about it: in the original SEIV, you would develop a planet in a certain way, but this development was very limited: after you put 20 or 25 facilities in there (less if you cannot breathe the atmosphere), you are pretty much done. Those facitiles could be queued up from the start, and the planet could be left alone for some time.

When you research a new type of facilites, you make adjustments, but that does not happen that often.

This all means: very little micro-management! (Hip-hip-hurray!) I can concentrate on building ships and military operations without sacrificing my production or research capacity.

Now, the bad news is that in Proportions it's not that simple at all. You cannot queue in a cultural center form the start: it will take forever to finish. You have to gradually add lower-level cities, and then you choose the right times to upgrade them. Add to it the hardcoded limitation of upgrading only to the latest, and you get a real nightmare. When do I advance my research, what city level do I build first on a new colony - so that it will finish in a reasonable time, and would then upgrade in a reasonable time... oh, all these decisions are now really important! And that means micro-management rules...

I knew all theis for some time now, but I didn't want ot post because I didn't have solutions to propose. Now I feel I have some.

The goal in Proportions in simple here: to have a really powerful Homeworld, and to have colony worlds that can be made quite powerful in time but start very weak and almost never reach the homeworld power.

Now: how about, instead of having more advanced facilities on the homeworld, just having more of them?

Let's say, a homeworld has 500 "big cities" (clicks with reality, too!). A big city can be built in 1 year on average (with the future avanced technology http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif ), so it takes 500 years to build up a comparable planet -- fair enough, isn't it?

A world with non-breathable atmosphere can have a limit of 50 facilities or so - so they would cap up quicker. The numbers can be played with, and we still can have different city types - just not that many, two or three. That way, upgrading does not become a nightmare. And a planet could still be filled up with research centers in just several years. I leave the details to the reader http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif (more specifically, to PvK http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif )

Ok, that's just an idea, all input is welcome. I just think that, given the nature of upgrades in SEIV, playing with the number of facilities versus their level is a more promising way. Don't you think so?

Aub

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

One potential problem with the Large number of facility slots you are proposing is that you can only build one facility per turn max.

That means it will still take at least 500 turns to fill any breathable planet with even the cheapest facilities.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

I love all feedback, but in this case, my reply may sound like a bunch of counter-arguments. But, here's my first take on this.

1) The thing that really stands out to me is that I have the opposite experience as a player. I seem to spend much more time micro-managing planet development in the standard game than I do in Proportions games. One reason is simply that I can generate colonies more quickly, but also, in the standard game, most facilities are built in a single turn, while in Proportions, each one usually takes at least a few turns, and sometimes a few years. So I only have to consider maybe 2-3 empty construction queues per turn, while in my standard games, I often have dozens to think about each turn.

2) It may be because I'm so familiar with the facility values in Proportions, and have set up some spreadsheets as I designed and balanced them, but to me the facility choices don't seem all that complicated. The range of choices is very great, and offers a huge range between cheap and fast versus long-term facilities that are more compact. It almost always makes sense to fill up slots with the cheapest ones, and only then start investing in larger ones.

3) Maybe there's a way, but offhand I think it might not be possible to give the homeworld 500 facility slots, without giving all breathable planets 500 facility slots. Also, going back to my reaction #1 above, this sounds like much more micromanagement, rather than less. And the view of what is on each planet sounds like it would get to be a nightmare, since there is no "compressed view" offered for planets.

So in sum, I guess I think maybe you aren't identifying your issue accurately. Maybe you are just confused about what your construction and upgrade options are, rather than having a micromanagement issue?

PvK

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

I agree. Aub' idea is very interesting but I personally have less micromanagement with Proportions : it takes long time to build advanced facilities and planet can be left alone for years. Besides, there is no need to colonize as many planets as possible as in normal SE IV. Half a dozen of breathable planets is all what you need for whole game, really !

[ October 07, 2002, 00:44: Message edited by: oleg ]

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Sure there is a reason to colonize them: to keep others from doing so. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Another reason would be to set up a military base, with defenses and facilties to resupply, repair, and refit ships, store units, etc. In this way, you can move towards taking other player's developed colonies, and also expand the area over which you can operate your fleet in strength, particularly since more powerful ships in Proportions have serious tradeoffs between speed and range.

But I think oleg was referring to the planets that you try to develop to be as productive as possible, in which case it can make sense to concentrate on only a few at a time.

PvK

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm, right, but in the original SEIV, you can queue things up for years ahead since the choice is really straightforward.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ok, ok, I admit, I just don't feel comfortable with this system - maybe I don't understand how to deal with it! Could someone tell me what a usual development path for a colony world would look like?

Let's suppose I build a bunch of lowest-level cities first, say, 15 or 20 - now upgrading them all is a very bold move as it will take forever to complete... So I need to build two-three of them, and then I upgrade these to the next level, right? What about the level after that - it again takes forever! Also, as soon as I reasearch the third level, upgrading to the second level is not available for other worlds, so I need to be very careful with that. Hmm. I feel like I'm solving a puzzle, and this puzzle does not really belong to SEIV. It feels somewhat artificial, doesn't it?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's OK - in Proportions, any breathable world can anyway be developed ad infinum - bringing it even to half the strength of a homeworld takes forever.

Thanks for listening me out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif -- Aub

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

One of the main intents of Proportions mod is to make most decisions more interesting, particularly in areas where the standard set offers clear choices. There are new kinds of choices and trade-offs, with many valid decisions, in many areas of play, including facility choice. I think that's a lot of fun and more interesting, because you can choose how to develop a planet, how much, in what way, etc. Colonies end up having more personality that way, and the whole process seems more interesting.

It's certainly true that not all players want facility choices to be more interesting. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

I think I already describes a typical way to build a production colony that is efficient, below. Again:

1) Move population there, hopefully 10M or more, but not necessarily more than about 50M.

2) Fill up, minus or two slots, on the smallest available facility of the desired type. E.g. Mineral Mine I, Research Facility I.

3) Build a Construction Yard, at least, if you have a construction bonus and/or Hardy Industrialist, or have a higher tech in construction yards. If you don't want immediate return, it may be more efficient in the long run to build the contstruction yard first.

4) Scrap one facility at a time and build complex-sized facilities, or cities or minor cities.

5) Consider researching other techs that give better facilities, or bonus facilities, such as computers, etc.

However, you may want to just do steps 1) and 2). That is, you can do quite well with standard SE4 colony facilities, IF you can expand to a bunch of planets and defend them all. The main reasons to intensify development on single planets are that often it's difficult to get a whole lot of colonies before running into aliens, and the difficulty of transporting population over large distances.

Also, military colonies are important. Build resupply depot + construction yard, and dump units on at least one planet in each system you want to have a strong presence in.

That's the quick course. Trying to build big cities and so on is actually gravy - you can probably do fine without worrying about how well you are doing it, because it's a long-term thing. If you're more interested in other aspects of play, it's not all that important, unless you're trying to win a peaceful long-term economic strategy.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm, right, but in the original SEIV, you can queue things up for years ahead since the choice is really straightforward.

Quote:

2) It may be because I'm so familiar with the facility values in Proportions, and have set up some spreadsheets as I designed and balanced them, but to me the facility choices don't seem all that complicated.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ok, ok, I admit, I just don't feel comfortable with this system - maybe I don't understand how to deal with it! Could someone tell me what a usual development path for a colony world would look like?

Let's suppose I build a bunch of lowest-level cities first, say, 15 or 20 - now upgrading them all is a very bold move as it will take forever to complete... So I need to build two-three of them, and then I upgrade these to the next level, right? What about the level after that - it again takes forever! Also, as soon as I reasearch the third level, upgrading to the second level is not available for other worlds, so I need to be very careful with that. Hmm. I feel like I'm solving a puzzle, and this puzzle does not really belong to SEIV. It feels somewhat artificial, doesn't it?

Your point about a planet with 15 to 20 cities is valid, but in practice, that takes a huge amount of time to develop anyway, and isn't all that efficient unless you are trying to maximize single planets. At any rate, I would recommend just scrapping single cities (or more typically, smaller facilities) and replacing them, rather than trying to upgrade 15+ cities at once. The upgrades only really work well with 1 or 2 at once, because of the limits of SE4, but it doesn't really happen that often, in my experience.

Often I make planets with many non-urban facilities, and just one or two urban facilities, which I then upgrade.

PvK

Quote:

3) Maybe there's a way, but offhand I think it might not be possible to give the homeworld 500 facility slots, without giving all breathable planets 500 facility slots...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's OK - in Proportions, any breathable world can anyway be developed ad infinum - bringing it even to half the strength of a homeworld takes forever.

Thanks for listening me out http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif -- Aub</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Why can't you do the same in Proportions ??
Queue 10 miners and 5 cities and your typical medium planet fill have a full queu that would serve your for 200 turns ! Press "upgrade" every time you discover mineral miner 2 and advanced city. I really do not understand the desire to remove all the charm of Proportions colony development.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

I really enjoy colony development in Proportions. I hate having a hundred idenical worlds each one with 10 identical mineral miners on. BORING!

I'd much rather take the time to build a more interesting world with a minor city, a rad extractor, a space port and 2 colonial communities, and then another world with a space port city, a space yard, 3 solar rad collectors and 2 minor cities...

It makes each one unique. Gives it character. More like a living, breathing planetary community than a number in an accounting device.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Exactly. I like to play Proportions because after while I get warm feelings to my most developed planets. I even rename them individualy !

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Let me review my position. I am for ineteresting choices, but I am against the upgrade nightmare. Now, if I could upgrade each city individually and to the level I desire, I would probably be happy: it's more micro-management than I want, but it pays off in the being "more interesting".

Upgrading is, however, severely limited in SEIV, and that makes upgrade choices and timing not fun. I do not like struggling with random and artificially imposed constraints.

PvK, all scenarios you describe do not touch upgrading to higher-level facilities. You say it's "gravy"? Well, your grave has a burned taste! If it does not work, why have it there?

What I was proposing is to increase the number of available slots so that (at least 99% of the time) you don't have to upgrade, you can only add (that does not take the variety away, does it). Isn't it a logical conclusion?

(Ok, maybe 500 facility slots was an overkill. How about 125? SEIV facility screen has 64 slots on it, so it's two full screens; that's not too bad!)

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">First, it does not work on a non-breathable world where you only have 5 facility slots max. You HAVE to plan upgrades. Now, if you queue 5 cities in there, by the time you're done you're in a tough spot since now upgrading to an advanced city will take your planet off the map for several YEARS (at least, and with no "liquidity"). And you do want those advanced cities; the first-level cities do not produce much (almost no reasearch for example). Ah, no - you are forced to solve the upgrade puzzle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Aub

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, My Mileage Varies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I like the "charm of Proportions colony development", I would just like it to be a little more 'fire and forget' than the current, more micromanaged, style.

Unless the minister that builds facilities, whoever he is, is up to the job. Anyone care to let the AI handle their colony development?

Steve.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

I guess I look at the choices offered by Proportions colony development as adding some actual management, or macro-management, rather than micro-management. It's still a perfectly valid and effective strategy to make dull pre-planned colonies planned years or decades in advance (just fill up on minor facilities - you'll only usually have a handful of planets in a position to build any cities, anyway, and the decisions to do so are years apart).

I agree that the upgrade mechanic is an unfortunate artificial limitation. I just offer some uses for what upgrade options the game allows. When I select the values for the various larger facilities, I look at a number of factors including the time before return on investment, and the ability to upgrade. If you really use all of the slots on a planet with major facilities, then there becomes a choice, if you want to do even more major development there, between a long multiple-facility upgrade, with no loss in production during the upgrade, but a longer period of waiting for any improvement; or scrap and replace, which may seem wasteful, and may not be as efficient as building a city on another planet, but give faster return-on-investment than upgrading 3 or more large facilities at once (and also will give a major immediate boost for the scrap value of the facility).

It is an interesting suggestion to use more facility slots. It would mean re-working ALL of the production facility values, however, which would be a lot of work.

Also, as I described a lot during the "Proportion Mod - so confusing!" thread, I am using the low number of slots on domed colonies to abstractly represent the extreme difficulty of trying to turn a wildly inhospitible environment into a productive and efficient world comparable to the homeworld. If domed colonies offered bunches of facility slots, it would be years and years before you'd notice any inconvenience from developing on the worst worlds, which IMO would be much less desirable (from a design standpoint). That is, I _like_ that there are serious limits, inconvenience and inefficiency, and therefore choices, about what you can put on a domed colony.

PvK

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Ok, my concrete proposal is:

1. Remove all upgrade options for cities and complexes. That is, the only option is to scrap and replace. Tough? Yes, but at least you won't feel that you're lagging behind because someone's juggling the twisted upgrade mechanics better than you do.

2. Make upgrades on Research Centers II / Mineral Miners II etc. very cheap - so that one could upgrade a whole bunch in reasonable time. The cost here is research; and if the research costs need to be increased even more, so be it.

I'd like to see more facility slots, but I buy the arguments that it will make non-breathable worlds too similar to the breathable ones, and that it's a lot of re-balancing work.

How's that? I'm simply trying to work around the upgrade mechanics, that's all. For me, the definition of micromanagement is "there is a tedious task, and doing it manually and doing it well brings significant gameplay benefits"... So if managing city upgrades is tedious and feels unnatural, I'd rather not see this option at all. Does it take anything from the game? I don't think so.

(An example of an unnatural limitation: you have two domed colonies, one has 5 Cities. You'd like to upgrade them to Major Cities, and to start building a Megalopolis on the other... and you cannot! Why? How are the two related!? The only reason is the game mechanics... so now you have to make a choice. It is so, SO IRRITATING - I'd rather NOT have the choice to upgrade, and not think about this kind of unnatural interdependencies!)

Aub

[ October 08, 2002, 19:23: Message edited by: Aub ]

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Couldn't the whole nonbreathable/tough life situation be created by a low population limit, and the poor resource production/build rate modifier associated with it?

PS:
With enough facility slots available per planet, the scrap & rebuild to upgrade would be reasonable. I would say 10 facilities per planet would be about the minimum for this.

[ October 08, 2002, 20:13: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

I've never played an extensive game of Proportions...don't get me wrong, I've played a hundred plus turns in one game, but that's nothing.

If I understand this, your main complaint is the upgrade feature. That you can only upgrade to the highest level? I can see that.

On the other hand, scrapping whole cities is a weird concept...talk about counterintuitive.

Perhaps it would be possible to divide the tree up into low density, medium density, and high density settlements.

Dunno, but I can see your point with the upgrade thing.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">As well as discussing alterations to the Proportions mod, I hope you're sending emails to Malfador requesting improvements to the upgrade system. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Quick suggestion:
Upgrades should give you the "how many do you want" menu just like for units!

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, and the fact that you can only upgrade all facilities at once... and that it does not upgrade them one-by-one, so you cannot interrupt the process. All these limitations combined together produce a very awkward system.

Of course I'd like to see it improved, but in the meantime I'd like to see it worked around in the mods like Proportions, instead of building a complex upgrade tree on top of the poor functioning system.

Aub

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

"Of course I'd like to see it improved, but in the meantime I'd like to see it worked around in the mods like Proportions, instead of building a complex upgrade tree on top of the poor functioning system."

I don't agree that removing the possibility entirely is "working around it", really."

Phoenix-D

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Aub, taking into account the _very_ long time needed to build even a city, you can research almost all cultural facilities, up to arcology. Thus, if you don't like to upgrade, start to build whatever facility you like on every planet and never bother to upgrade them ! True, you want be able to use global "upgrade" option and go through each planet...

[ October 09, 2002, 00:32: Message edited by: oleg ]

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

I think I agree with Aub: the course you describe is far more micro-managed than a standard game of SEIV.

In a standard game, I load up the entire queue (say, 25 slots) and forget it until it's queue becomes empty. Minimum player effort required: upgrades can be handled auto-magically. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

In a Proportions game, doing as you suggest requires constant tinkering. I'm all for more interesting choices, but I prefer that I only have to make data entries once!

Overall I love Proportions and it's now the normal Version of the game that I play. This doesn't mean that I think it's perfect however, and I'm sure you don't either: in my (personal) view, colony development is a chore in Proportions which I could well do without. So maybe we could look at the suggestion again, please?

Steve.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oleg, is this a practical advice? I don't think so. Try playing like this in multiplayer... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

The problem is that the current system forces you to use upgrades - if you don't, and the other guy does, you lose valuable time and resources.

Plus, the facility parameters imply upgrading - building an Arcology from ground up does not make sense, it will take too long. It is designed to be reached through a series of upgrades. Unfortunately, if you were careless enough to research Arcology right away, you are screwed for good - you upgrade options are severely limited for the rest of the game. Is it a good thing that more research puts you at a disadvantage? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Aub

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Yeah, I was just kidding. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

BTW, arcology is a separate group - cities can be upgraded only up to metropholis (or megapolis - I forgot). In fact, PvK orininaly did not mod multistate cities - it was our idea (me and others) to have intermediate upgdadable stages. And it certainly made Proportions much more lovely. I would hate to lose multistage colony buildup.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Yes, Arcologies can only be built from the ground up, because they are not just mega-cities piled on old cities (those are Megalopoli). An Arcology is a completely different kind of thing, with its own eco-system worked into an artificial vertical environment.

Aub, I think I may have an observation that will help put your mind at ease about the upgrades of facilities. When I worked out the numbers for the cultural and (mega)complex facilities, I did consider that the upgrade mechanic was kinda lame, and that it would be annoying if players had to micro-manage their use of upgrades in order to stay competitive with opponents. For this reason and for other design reasons, I chose numbers for costs and output designed so that it actually isn't an advantage to try to abuse the upgrade system, because it's actually better, in almost every case, to build a new facility, as opposed to upgrading to a larger Version of the same type. The only advantages of upgrading (and of choosing large facilities) are in terms of concentration on single planets, which helps in terms of compact defense, and ability to combine bonus effects. In general though, you get more, and often sooner, by just building more smaller facilities, even if you're only upgrading one at a time.

So, at least if you're just trying to maximize your empire's total production, again, you can just follow the simple "fill up on simple facilities" system so familiar from SE4.

There are several advantages to the larger facilities, and in some cases, to upgrading, but in general it's pretty safe to assume that just building new stuff is actually more efficient, as long as you have slots to fill.

On the suggestion to tweak the upgrade costs, I'd love to have such options, but that's another thing the current SE4 doesn't let us mod.

Ok, so it does stink that SE4 only gives limited upgrade options. But as oleg and others mentioned, I added the upgrades at the request of players who enjoy it, and I think it's nice to at least have some ability to upgrade, at least as long as it's balanced so that there is no trick that makes it more efficient to upgrade than to build normally. (For instance, this is why I made Communities not upgrade to cities, because it would be a shortcut in terms of costs, which I can't mod.)

PvK

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

About upgrade cost: there is a an entry in settings.txt like "upgrade cost = 50". Does it affect ships upgrades only or applies to planets as well ? If later, may be we can vary it a little.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

"Upgrade Facility Cost Percent := 50"

Aub or PvK,

Change that to 100 and you are good to go. The upgrade system will still be lame, but you won't have to worry about being ripped off, and you can scrap and build to your hearts desire.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Is what would be nice is if upgrades, instead of currently modifying the cost of the new facility, applied a percentage of the old facility towards the new one. This way the strategy of building a 15kT minor city and upgrading to a 100kT metropolis would cost something on the order of 92.5KT (15 + (100 - 15*50%)) rather than the current system of 65kT (15 + 100*.5%).

But of course, something hardcoded and requires us to bother Aaron, not PVK.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, yes, that makes sense. You still get a significant benefit when you upgrade - the original facility keeps working and producing all that time it takes to upgrade it (and the time can be long!).

But this way upgrading feels more like a bonus feature, not something essential for survival of your species. You see, the way it is now, *everything* needs to be done through upgrades. If you plan to build a Metropolis, building a Minor City and then upgrading it wins hands down - it cuts the cost of the Metropolis in half!

Simply changing this line in settings may however destroy game balance. If this change is to be done in Proportions, higher level facility costs need to be reduced, as now there will be no way to get them at half-cost by playing the upgrade game.

PvK, what do you think of this?

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think I still support my original math when designing the facilities to balance against the problem you are describing, which I don't think exists, even though it might appear to, without benefit of spreadsheet.

Let's take the example you list above. Yes, Minor City means you can upgrade to Metropolis for half of the cost of building a new Metropolis. But that does not mean doing so is more efficient than not using upgrades (unless the victory condition of your game is "the one with the biggest city, wins" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ).

So, say you have a planet with a constant construction rate of 2000x3, and you want to do intensive development that will maximize production over the next 30 or so turns. Plan A is to build a Minor City and upgrade to Metropolis. Plan B is to build two Minor Cities and then a City.

Plan A spends 15,000x3 resources over 8 turns building a minor city, and then 50,000x3 over 25 turns upgrading it to a metropolis. The result after 35 turns is 65,000x3 spent, with 8,525 produced while the Minor City was there, and 2,300 produced by the Metropolis, with 1,150 production/turn attained.

Plan A TOTAL: 184,175 in the hole, which will be paid off by itself in 160 turns (after turn 35).

Plan B spends 15,000x3 resources over 8 turns twice in a row, and then 25,000x3 over 13 turns building a City. This takes 29 turns (4 less than Plan A). After 35 turns, the result is 30,000x3 spent on the two minor cities, the first of which has produced 9,315, the second has produced 6,555. The City cost 25,000 x 3 and has produced 2550. Total production/turn attained is 1,115 (only 35 less than the Metropolis).

Plan B TOTAL: 146,580 in the hole, which will be paid off by itself in 132 turns (after turn 35).

Both plans suffer in efficiency comparison to just building ordinary industrial facilities as in the standard game. The only exceptions (I think) are if you are trying to compress as much into as little space as possible. That only pays off in the very long-term, as in, hundreds and hundreds of turns, assuming you are going to sit and develop your own local systems, instead of spreading and colonizing and conquering the quadrant.

So, the standard set tactic of sprawl and conquer still pays off, but the rate of payoff is a couple of orders of magnitude (or more) slower, and there are less efficient alternatives in intensive development, so a small isolationist or neutral can continue to develop as well. Also, of course, a larger empire is more difficult to protect, etc.

PvK

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, indeed. In Last game I over expanded myself and got into war with two AIs on medium bonus. Both fronts were 2-3 systems away from homeworld and I simply could not pay maintanance for two big fleets. Fortunately (well, unfortunately in fact) AI can not defend effectively against swarms of fighters or I would have to abandom few planets.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Indeed, if you have enough facility slots on each planet, the problem of upgrades does not present itself. That's why I posposed to have more facility slots in the first place.

But you will have a bunch of non-breathable worlds, with just a couple of facility slots on each, and you need to devise a development plan for those. What, do I just forget them? Then why have upgrades at all? obviously one does not need them for breathable planets, not for a very very long time!

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I am not trying to get rid of those less efficient ways of development. I'm simply saying they need not be done through upgrades.

If the facility upgrade cost is 100% (that is, you don't win anything by upgrading), and the Metropolis costs 65,000x3, your math still holds.

But now the plan C - "build a Metropolis right away" - will have comparable results, so I *don't have to upgrade if I decide to build a Metropolis*.

As things currently stand, *if* I want to go for a Metropolis, I *have to* upgrade. Your point that building a Metropolis may not be that efficient a strategy is true, but irrelevant http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Thanks! -- Aub

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">As I've said before, it's supposed to be inconvenient to build large developed colonies on inhospitable planets. One approach which seems to work well is to mainly use them for minor military bases. Resupply depot, maybe a shipyard, maybe a cargo facility and a bunch of defensive units. This will often be much more useful than trying to invest tens or hundreds of thousands of resources on expensive production facilities in a relatively weak (low unit capacity) location. Another is to just build maybe one productive facility and use upgrades on it. This seems to work relatively well, to me.

"Why have upgrades at all?" As I said before, players asked for them, and they offer a whole spectrum of different choices, which seems to me more interesting. Also, because these are all very long-term investments whose payoffs are limited compared to the whole empire's production from homeworld and trade, and the effects of fleet actions, it's not really the same sort of balance concern that production facilities are in the standard game. You can analyze the production facilities to death until you have the best possible production strategy you like, but it's not going to be hugely unbalancing, because there are many more powerful forces at work, and the simple technique of building cheap production facilities first is plenty effective, and may be the "best way" for balance purposes anyway.

Quote:

I am not trying to get rid of those less efficient ways of development. I'm simply saying they need not be done through upgrades. If the facility upgrade cost is 100% (that is, you don't win anything by upgrading), and the Metropolis costs 65,000x3, your math still holds. But now the plan C - "build a Metropolis right away" - will have comparable results, so I *don't have to upgrade if I decide to build a Metropolis*. As things currently stand, *if* I want to go for a Metropolis, I *have to* upgrade. Your point that building a Metropolis may not be that efficient a strategy is true, but irrelevant http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well irrelevance is a matter of opinion. Sure, if I buy your supposition that I want to build a Metropolis on a planet with no pre-existing Minor Cities, I can do it more quickly by upgrading. This seems kind of reasonable, and interesting, that along the way to a Metropolis, a Minor City will appear. Proportions tries to offer a wide range of choices and perspectives, which are all valid from some perspective, with different pros and cons to choose between. They may get to be complex if you try to find the best thing to do, but you don't really have to find the best way - there are plenty of ways that are reasonable, with different trade-offs, and colonial development optimization is not, it seems to me, likely to be crucial or decisive from a play-balance perspective.

PvK

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Ok, I guess it's time to drop the ball. PvK, your point is, I think, best expressed in the quotation above. Mine is that I am, as a manic perfectionist, still trying to get the colonial development right... and the illogical mess that current upgrade mechanisms create drives me nuts. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif Well, I guess I'll have to learn to live with it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Thanks -- Aub

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

SE IV upgrade process is indeed far from perfect but I honestly think the idea to increse number of slots on the planet and decrease cost of facilities will result either even more micromanagemrnt or ridicule Proportions mod to the level of vanila SEIV.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Oleg, my latest proposal was to set the facility upgrade cost to 100%, and to adjust the cost of big facilities correspondingly.

(E.g. Metropolis now costs 100Kx3, but can be built as 15Kx3 for building a minor city + 50Kx3 for upgrading = 65Kx3; therefore, the cost for Metropolis should be adjusted to 65K. This should make upgrading possible - if you want the old facility to continue producing - but not vital.)

PvK made a couple of very valid points about why getting more facility slots is not a good solution, and I bought his arguments.

Aub

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

But setting 100% cost of upgrade will affect
ships too... I would hate to pay full bill every
time I upgrade DUC III to DUC IV http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Nope! There are separate settings for facilities and ships:

Upgrade Facility Cost Percent := 50
Retrofit Cost Percent For Comps := 120
Retrofit Cost Percent For Comp Removal := 30

The facility value does not affect the comp values, and vice versa.

Re: Proportions and Facilities
 

Yes, of course. How could I forget ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif